“But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.”
(1Thessalonians 5:4)

Not In Darkness

Dear Friends,

Greetings! “Coming events cast their shadows before. Significant events are often preceded by signs that they are about to happen. (From Thomas Campbell's poem, "Lochiel's Warning.") If you pay attention to the news, you can generally tell when something momentous is about to happen.”

Wizard.
-

Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day!


For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,


But man cannot cover what God would reveal:


'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,


And coming events cast their shadow before.

“BILLY GRAHAM SOUNDS ALARM FOR 2ND COMING”

'Seventy seven percent of evangelical Christians – believe the “world is now living in the biblical end times.”'

“Alea iacta est (English: "The die has been cast") is a Latin phrase attributed by Suetonius to Julius Caesar on January 10, 49 BC as he led his army across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy. With this step, he entered Italy at the head of his army in defiance and began his long civil war against Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase is still used today in Italy (italian: "Il dado è tratto") to mean that events have passed a point of no return, that something inevitably will happen.” Wikipedia

It would seem much of the world is now aware that we have entered an unparallelled time in humanity’s history.

Almost every week we receive emails asking us what is the Tribulation, when does the Tribulation begin, how long does it last, what is the difference between pre-Tribulation and post-Tribulation, between the Tribulation and the Wrath of God, etc. etc.

We would like to encourage you that if you are unsure of the sequel of events coming upon the world concerning the “End Time” to please visit our “Studies” section on this web site, especially the studies on the books of Daniel and Revelation.

Our friend and colleague, Joseph Candel, has done what we believe is an excellent job of compiling the best material available to explain what is about to happen in the world.

Remember, that although events are definitely manifested in our physical world, it is a spiritual conflict, between good and evil, God and Satan.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12

Of upmost importance is receiving Jesus Christ as your Saviour. “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Romans 10:9-10

To receive Jesus just pray this simple prayer: Dear Jesus, I confess I am a sinner and ask for Your forgiveness. Please come into my heart, forgive my sin, and give me eternal life, amen.

If you would like or need more information concerning salvation we would be pleased to answer your questions and send you more material concerning salvation through Jesus.

We also want to comment on one of the articles below, “THE GOVERNMENT IS RESEARCHING HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS”

After viewing the video the author comments; “That video should chill you to the core.”

We do not believe that that is the correct response because; “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

Have a great week ahead.

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WND

BILLY GRAHAM SOUNDS ALARM FOR 2ND COMING

Famed evangelist sees signs 'converging now for the 1st time'

Published: October 20,2013

Evangelist Billy Graham

By Troy Anderson

Just as Noah did in ancient times, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham is sounding the alarm that the Second Coming is “near” and signs of the end of the age are “converging now for the first time since Jesus made those predictions.”

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly “biblical prophecies are being realized.”

And last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., claimed the world has entered the last days.

“When you see up is down and right is wrong, when this is happening, we were told this: that these days would be as the days of Noah,” Bachmann said.

The remarks by Graham, Netanyahu and Bachmann come amid a steadily rising wave of public interest in the end times, as demonstrated by recent polls and New York Times and Amazon.com bestselling books such as “The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future,” by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, and “Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change,” by Pastor John Hagee.

In September, a poll by the Ventura, Calif.-based Barna Group found 4 in 10 Americans – and 77 percent of evangelical Christians – believe the “world is now living in the biblical end times.”

Now, a new wave of end-times predictions for 2014 and 2015 involving blood moons on Jewish holy days and prophetically significant events on the Shemitah – the ancient biblical year of the Sabbath – are igniting even more interest in humanity’s ultimate fate.

Throw in next year’s reboot of the “Left Behind” film featuring Nicolas Cage and the cinematic destruction of biblical proportions in “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe, and last-days fever is back with a mainstream vengeance.

“I think we’re on the verge of a global awakening in interest in apocalyptic events,” said Paul McGuire, an internationally recognized prophecy expert who is a regular commentator on Fox News and CNN and appeared on two highly rated History Channel specials, including “7 Signs of the Apocalypse.”

“I see a fuse being lit here, between what Billy Graham, Michele Bachman and Benjamin Netanyahu said, and I think there is going to be an explosion of interest in the end times like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” McGuire said.

Watching the signs

In an exclusive email interview with WND, Graham, 94, who is giving what may be his last message to the world as part of the My Hope America with Billy Graham evangelistic outreach in early November, said the world is “coming toward the end of the age.”

“There’s a great deal to say in the Bible about the signs we’re to watch for and when these signs all converge at one place we can be sure that we’re close to the end of the age,” Graham wrote. “And those signs, in my judgment, are converging now for the first time since Jesus made those predictions.”

In his new book, “The Reason for My Hope: Salvation,” the famed preacher who has delivered the gospel message to more people face-to-face than anyone in history wrote the great hope of the Christian faith rests in the promised return of Christ.

Graham said he now has a burden for “sounding the alarm for humanity to repent and turn from their sin … just as Noah did in ancient days.”

“God keeps his promises, and this is why we can be sure that the return of Christ is near,” Graham said. “Scripture tells us that there will be signs pointing toward the return of the Lord. I believe all these signs are evident today.”

The evangelistic outreach and book come as a number of major evangelists – Graham, his son Franklin Graham, Reinhard Bonnke, Greg Laurie, Luis Palau, Banning Liebscher and others – are turning their attention toward America in the hope of helping ignite what Graham calls an end-times “great spiritual awakening.”

In what the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association describes as the largest outreach in its six-decade history, Graham will give a dynamic and poignant pre-recorded message the week of Nov. 7, his 95th birthday. The My Hope programs will be available for viewing online and on YouTube. The Cross, the primary program in the My Hope series, will be broadcast on the Fox News channel, TBN, Christian networks and local television stations in a number of cities.

The event follows an open letter Graham released in the summer of 2012 titled “My Heart Aches for America.”

In the letter, Graham wondered what his late wife, Ruth, would think of a nation in which “self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.”

Graham compared America to the ancient city of Nineveh, the lone superpower of its time. When the prophet Jonah finally traveled to Nineveh and proclaimed God’s warning, the people repented and escaped judgment, Graham wrote, adding he believes the same thing could happen today.

Acceleration

The end-times warnings by Graham, Netanyahu, Bachmann and others come amid a series of events in recent years that have prompted many to ask whether the countdown to Armageddon has begun.

The events include the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the global recession and more recently what some view as an increase in purported end-times signs, including super-earthquakes, mega-tsunamis and gargantuan storms and tornadoes.

“We’re looking at things like the possibility of another global economic meltdown,” said McGuire, an author of 22 prophecy books, including “The Day the Dollar Died” and the upcoming “A Prophecy of the Future of America.”

“Consider the earthquake warnings, the potential volcanic eruption of Yellowstone, the Japanese tsunamis and the radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster traveling across the ocean and contaminating the food supply here on the West Coast, along with massive tornadoes the size of which we’ve never seen in human history,” he said.

McGuire said government and scientific experts are also expressing concerns about the potential of a massive West Coast tsunami, increased solar flare activity and severe climate change.

“The dramatic and unprecedented planetary climate change is something on the level of the apocalyptic predictions of the Bible,” McGuire said. “We’re on the verge right now, because of climate change, of massive food and water shortages, which could affect tens of millions of people worldwide because of the droughts that have occurred. The intense heat and water shortages have dried up the crops, and we are going to see that play out in the near future because of all the freak weather.”

Blood moons

Against this apocalyptic backdrop, prominent faith leaders such as Graham, Greg Laurie, Cahn and John Hagee say they are witnessing an unparalleled acceleration in last-days signs that suggest the Second Coming is fast approaching.

Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church and author of the newly-released book “Four Blood Moons,” told his 22,000-member congregation recently that the appearance of four blood moons on Jewish holy days between April 2014 and October 2015 points to a “world-shaking event” that could signify the beginning of events leading up to the seven-year Great Tribulation.

“I believe that the heavens are God’s billboard – that he has been sending signals to planet Earth and we just haven’t been picking them up,” Hagee told his San Antonio, Texas, congregation. “Today, with the help of God’s word and some very astute scientists, I’m going to walk you through 500 years (of four blood moons on Jewish feast days) and show you how God is literally screaming at the world: ‘I am coming soon.’”

The phenomenon, a rare combination of lunar and solar eclipses, has only occurred a few times in the last 500 years – 1492, 1948 and 1967. It will happen again in 2014-15.

The previous dates correspond with the Jews’ expulsion from Spain and Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America (a sanctuary for the Jewish people), the creation of Israel, the Six-Day War and what Hagee and other Bible prophecy scholars believe could be the Middle East “War of Gog and Magog” predicted by the prophet Ezekiel 2,700 years ago. This war, according to Bible prophecy scholars, involves an attack on Israel by a coalition of nations led by Russia and Iran.

“The Bible speaks of signs in the heavens that have been discovered and recorded by NASA that you yourself can find on Google on the Internet,” Hagee told his church. “The coming four blood moons point to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015. What does it mean? What is the prophetic significance? Is this the end of the age?”

Likewise, Cahn, author of “The Harbinger,” which has remained on the New York Times bestseller list since its release in January 2012, says his book highlights a pattern of escalating judgments at seven-year intervals on the Shemitah that may point to another major prophetic event between September 2014 and September 2015.

Cahn’s book, based on a real-life prophetic mystery he discovered in Isaiah 9, frames a biblical warning of national judgment in a narrative as a journalist encounters a mysterious figure, “The Prophet,” who claims the same nine harbingers of divine judgment that preceded the destruction of Israel 2,700 years ago are now manifesting in America.

The book, and its newly released nonfiction version, “The Harbinger Companion,” notes that the greatest stock market crashes in American history occurred seven years apart. The first was shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the next on Sept. 29, 2008, amid a global economic panic.

“Both crashes took place on the exact same biblical day, Elul 29, the day of the Shemitah, the day appointed in the Bible to strike a nation’s financial realm, and wipe clean its financial accounts,” said Cahn, the senior rabbi at the nation’s largest messianic congregation, the Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, N.J.

“The Shemitah is based on a seven-year cycle,” he said. “If you go back seven years from the greatest crash in our financial history, it takes you to [Sept. 17, 2001].”

And while Sept. 11, 2001, and Sept. 29, 2008, are not exactly seven years apart on the Western calendar, they are on the biblical Hebrew calendar, Cahn pointed out.

“On the biblical Hebrew calendar, it was Elul 29, the Day of the Shemitah, to strike a nation’s financial realm,” Cahn said. “So the greatest crashes in American history, up to those days, each happened on the exact same biblical day, the day that just happened to be appointed to strike a nation’s financial realm, and exactly seven biblical years apart to the very day and the very hours.”

The next Shemitah begins in September 2014 and concludes in September 2015. And while he’s not “dogmatic as to what will happen,” Cahn said it’s quite curious to note that the dates of the blood moons “in some ways parallel the Shemitah’s in that they take place also between 2014 and 2015.”

“The correlation between (the blood moons) and the Hebrew holidays are very interesting,” Cahn said. “The occurrence of the blood moons on these Jewish holidays occurred only a few times in the past 2,000 years. Some of these, in the early Middle Ages, are hard to connect to significant dates. But the last three, the Spanish expulsion, the birth of Israel and the regaining of Jerusalem, are all very significant dates in Jewish history and, in the case of two of these, in end-time prophecy.”

Haven’t we heard this before?

Despite these apocalyptic portents, critics point to a nearly endless string of failed end-times predictions dating back thousands of years. This includes the the Mayan apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012, and radio evangelist Harold Camping’s prediction that Christ would return on May 21, 2011.

Laurie, pastor of the 15,000-member Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, Calif., and president of Harvest Crusades, said he’s seen many end-times prognosticators come and go over the last several decades.

Laurie, who got his start under the ministry of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa Pastor Chuck Smith, who died Oct. 3 at age 86, became a Christian during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s – a time when there was a great emphasis on the imminent return of Christ.

It was the decade of Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” the book the New York Times called the “No. 1 nonfiction bestseller” of the 1970s. The book popularized prophetic beliefs about the last days and contributed to the Jesus Movement.

“Well, clearly, decades have passed and Jesus has not returned,” Laurie said. “Were we misguided in our beliefs? Well, I don’t think we were. The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and it also says in the same series of verses that God is not late as some men count lateness, but is longsuffering toward us.

“And I’m glad that God did not answer our prayers back in the early ’70s for Jesus to come back, because if he had, there would have been a lot of people who would have missed the Rapture and would have gone through the Tribulation period.”

Today, Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said there is an urgency and sense “that the Lord Jesus could be returning soon.”

“The Bible gives us warning signs,” he said. “Jesus told his disciples the things people should be looking for, and I believe all the prophecies that have to take place for Jesus to return have been fulfilled.”

One of the big prophecies was the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948.

“It’s just now a question of when is that time, and I believe in my own heart that it’s sometime soon,” he said. “When I say soon – the next 10, 20 years – I don’t know. But as far as the history of the world, I believe we’re coming down to the midnight hour on God’s clock.”

‘We can’t go on much longer’

Charlie Daniels, the country music legend and the host of the recent documentary, “Behold a Pale Horse: America’s Last Chance,” said Billy Graham is a very dedicated man of God and “what he’s feeling is very much valid and in connection with what is going on now.”

“I also feel the end times are approaching,” said Daniels, who is best known for his No. 1 country hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” “I don’t know the chronology. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I know it’s closer than it was. I believe that the things left to be fulfilled in the Bible could be fulfilled in a very short amount of time.”

It’s a time, Billy Graham wrote in “The Reason for My Hope: Salvation,” to take the news of the day in one hand and the Bible in the other and watch the unfolding of the great drama of the ages come together.

“This is an exciting and thrilling time to be alive,” wrote Graham, a man who has preached to more people – 2.2 billion – than any Protestant in history and who has appeared on Gallup’s list of the most admired men in the world 56 times since 1955, more than any other individual in the world.

“I would not want to live in any other period,” he said.

“The Apocalypse (the unveiling of the end times) speaks powerfully of trouble ahead with storm warnings that carrying a booming jolt of truth. The warning is clear: prepare to meet thy God – followed by the voice of the gentle Shepherd – ‘Come.’”

A new world is coming, Graham wrote. The paradise that humanity lost in the Garden of Eden will be regained. Christ is coming to conquer evil and establish his perfect rule over all creation

“But until then God wants to give everyone an opportunity to know Christ through repentance and faith,” Graham wrote. “Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming. We are at a crossroads, and there are profound moral issues at stake. It is time to return to biblical truth.”

An award-winning journalist at the Los Angeles Daily News, The Press-Enterprise and other newspapers for two decades, Troy Anderson writes for Reuters, WND, Charisma and many other media outlets. He’s also the president and editor-in-chief of the World Prophecy Network – An Online Newsmagazine and Community Spreading the Hope of Jesus in the End Times. He lives in Irvine, Calif.

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Israel Hayom

'Permanent peace deal will be achieved in spring 2014'Palestinian news agency Maan quotes British Consul-General to Jerusalem Sir Vincent Fean as saying next spring will be 'crucial' to the peace process • Palestinian Authority President Abbas: We have to make the most out of this historic opportunity.

Daniel Siryoti

Sunday October 20, 2013

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Washington in July | Photo credit: Reuters

British Consul-General to Jerusalem Sir Vincent Fean hedged Saturday that "a permanent agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be reached by the spring of 2014," the Palestinian news agency Maan reported.

According to the report, Fean said that the agreement will include joint Israeli-Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem.

The British consul-general was quoted as saying that the spring of 2014 is going to be "crucial to the inception of a Palestinian state on the basis of a political solution," adding that "Jerusalem will serve as the shared capital of Israel and the future Palestinian state and the agreement will also include land swaps."

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also commented on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks over the weekend. Abbas, who slammed Israel's settlement policies in Judea and Samaria, said that "East Jerusalem will become the capital of the independent Palestinian state."

He added that the negotiations, which have been conducted in absolute secrecy, were "being held in a positive atmosphere and with respect. We have to make the most out of this historic opportunity. I call on the Israeli public and the Israeli government to act with us to realize the dream of comprehensive peace."

(For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. 1 Thessalonians 5:3)

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Arutz Sheva

Concerns as Israel Hit by Two Earthquakes in One Day

Israel experienced not one, but two earthquakes on Sunday, raising fears that a significant geological event is in the offing.

By David Lev

First Publish: 10/20/2013, 5:10 PMEarthquake preparedness drill

Israel experienced not one, but two earthquakes on Sunday, raising fears that a significant geological event was in the offing. Sunday's quakes followed one that occurred early Saturday morning, which was preceded by one last Thursday night.

The first quake was reported at 11:50 AM, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale. The epicenter of that quake was in the northern Kinneret, five kilometers north of Ginnosar. The second one, reported at 3:54 PM, also measured 3.6 on the Richter scale, and its epicenter was somewhat south of Ginnosar.

There were no injuries or damage in either quake, but both were felt distinctly in communities around the Kinneret, including Tiberias, where police received a barrage of calls from beachgoers and residents.

On Saturday, an earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter in the Kinneret, was reported as well. That followed an earthquake that was felt throughout northern Israel last Thursday night. The epicenter of that quake was also in the Kinneret. It reached 3.5 on the Richter scale, and was felt in communities surrounding the lake.

Eight days ago, an earthquake was felt in southern and central Israel, measuring at 6.4 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter beneath the Mediterranean about 40 kilometers under the sea bed, 70 kilometers west of Crete. In Israel, reports of the tremor were received from citizens in central and southern Israel, including Raanana, Rehovot and Ashkelon. It was reportedly felt mostly on the top floors of tall buildings. No injuries or damage were reported in that quake either.

Scientists at the Israel Geophysical Institute said they were examining the quakes, searching for patterns and clues that could indicate if the sudden confluence of small earthquakes could indicate that something bigger was imminent. The Kinneret is smack in the middle of the Syria-Africa rift, which occasionally “acts up,” with a major earthquake. The last such a quake, measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale, occurred in 1927. 300 people were killed in that incident.

In recent years, school children around the country, from kindergarten age and up, have participated in annual earthquake drills in their schools, practicing safe steps to take when the ground starts shaking.

In a recent interview, Dr. Ephraim Laor, who headed the National Steering Committee for Earthquake Preparedness, told Arutz Sheva that individual Israelis must prepare themselves for a major earthquake that could hit Israel. Experts have warned that Israel is expected to be hit by a major earthquake in the coming years.

(And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. Zechariah 14:4)

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MEM

Pope Francis will not meet with Netanyahu

Monday, 21 October 2013

Pope Francis met with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during his recent visit to Rome

A "diplomatic embarrassment" has arisen following the refusal of Pope Francis I to meet with Israel's prime minister at short notice. Benjamin Netanyahu's office had already announced that a meeting would take place during his visit to Italy, reported Haaretz, but the pope has no plans in this regard.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met the Pope during his recent visit to Rome where he received a pen as a gift, with the wish that he will use it to sign a peace agreement with Israel.

According to Haaretz, the Vatican became aware of Netanyahu's visit to Rome and his supposed meeting with Pope Francis through the media. "The Prime Minister's Office worked hard to hold the meeting and to avoid any embarrassment but to no avail," claimed the newspaper.

The Vatican informed Israel's ambassador to Italy, Naor Gilon, on Sunday that the prime minister will not meet the Pope; Netanyahu's advisors are said to be "outraged". Gilon said that the Vatican protocol for meetings is very complex. "To arrange for such a meeting within a week is regarded as an insult, so it has never happened," he explained.

Israel Radio reported that a new date for a meeting is to be set "as soon as possible".

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WND

BISHOP: POPE LEADING CHURCH TO 'DISASTER'

Believes world could be entering age of Antichrist

Published: October 20, 2013

JEROME R. CORSI

Citing the famous prophecies of Fatima, traditionalist Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard Fellay warned in an address in Kansas City that Pope Francis is precipitating the church’s decline and could be a herald that the world is entering the age of the Antichrist.

Fellay, who leads a society that has no canonical status in the Roman Catholic Church, said the “modernist views” professed by the pontiff are at odds with traditional Catholic teaching.

“The situation in the Catholic Church is a real disaster and the present pope is making it 10,000 times worse,” Fellay charged Oct. 12 at the Angelus Press Conference in Kansas City.

Fellay is superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, whose ministers, according to the Vatican, do not legitimately exercise ministry in the church.

Fellay, in his address, drew heavily from the Third Secret of Fatima, which many Catholics believe was given by the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, to Lucia Santos, one of three poor children who claimed to experience a series of six apparitions of Mary in Fatima, Portugal, between May and October in 1917.

The Third Secret centers on an apocalyptic vision in which an unidentified future pope is seen going up a steep mountain. At the top is a rough-hewn cross. The pope passes through a city in ruins, only to be killed at the foot of the cross by a group of soldiers who fire a barrage of bullets and arrows that wound the bishops, priests and believers of various ranks and positions accompanying the pope.

Fellay noted that when Sister Lucia was asked what the Third Secret of Fatima predicted, she pointed to chapters 8 through 13 of the Apocalypse, referring to the final book of the New Testament, also known as “The Revelation of St. John the Divine.”

Observing that chapter 8 of the Apocalypse speaks of the coming of the Antichrist, Fellay noted that Pope St. Pius X said at the beginning of his pontificate the “son of perdition” may already be on earth.

Fellay cited Cardinal Luigi Ciapi, the papal theologian of all popes from Pope Pius XII through Pope John Paul II, who said the Third Secret warned the apostasy within the church would begin at the top.

In 2000, the Vatican released what was declared to be the complete text of the Third Secret of Fatima, accompanied with a commentary authored by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.

Fellay stressed the “end times” nature of Sister Lucia’s vision by referring to a famous 1957 interview in which Lucia stressed that when the Third Secret is fulfilled “various nations will disappear from the face of the earth” and the “devil will do all in his power to overcome souls consecrated to God.”

‘Very scary times’

Fellay attacked Francis for advancing a new format for the Catholic Mass, following in the path of Vatican II, and for suggesting the Catholic Church condemns homosexuality, but not homosexuals, and that even atheists might achieve salvation if they live according to conscience.

Claiming these are “very scary times,” Fellay spoke of abortion as a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance. He characterized same-sex marriage as an “unnatural re-definition of marriage and related sins.”

Praying for a return to traditional Catholic values and practices, Fellay reiterated Sister Lucia’s plea for Catholics to recite the Rosary and to apply themselves to the Devotion of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the last remedies God has given to mankind.

Insisting there is “definitely a material chastisement of the world in sight,” Fellay warned of a coming catastrophe.

“How? When?” Fellay asked. “I have no idea. But if you put everything together, it is clear that God has had enough of the sins of man.”

Fellay’s Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, was founded in 1970 by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who strongly opposed communists and “Catholic socialists” who he believes hijacked Vatican II to abandon traditional Catholic practices and beliefs, including replacing the Latin Mass with a modern format in the vernacular of local cultures.

In 1988, in an apostolic letter titled “Ecclesia Dei,” or “The Church of God,” Pope John Paul II officially excommunicated Fellay because he was consecrated by Lefebvre in an act the Vatican characterized as “unlawful” and “schismatic.”

In 2009, the Congregation for Bishops, on instructions from Pope Benedict XVI, rescinded Fellay’s excommunication, while stressing that the SSPX has no canonical status in the Catholic Church and that any minister established by the SSPX has no right to exercise its ministry in the church.

Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Beroglio, has been identified with “liberation theology,” a Marxist revolutionary version of Christianity, ever since he was appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998.

In a meeting with priests from the Diocese of Rome, Francis made an effort to distance himself from the version of liberation theology practiced by Peruvian priest Father Gustavo Gutierrez.

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Press For Truth

Civil War And The Litmus Test – “Will You Shoot Americans?”

March 28, 2013

Dr. Jim Garrow is a renowned author and whistleblower who has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for his humanitarian work. He is the author of The Pink Pagoda: One Man’s Quest to End Gendercide in China.

He has spent over $25 million over the past sixteen years rescuing an estimated 40,000 baby Chinese girls from near-certain death under China’s one-child-per-couple policy by facilitating international adoptions. He is the founder and executive director of the Bethune Institute’s Pink Pagoda schools, private English-immersion schools for Chinese children. Today he runs 168 schools with nearly 6,300 employees.

Dr Garrow was recently contacted by a high ranking military official who implored him to reveal the truth about a “litmus test” that is being proposed by the Obama administration to the military asking the question “will you shoot Americans if they won’t give you their guns?”

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Silver Doctors

THE GOVERNMENT IS RESEARCHING HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

OCTOBER 19, 2013 BY THE DOC

Should the U.S. government be trying to figure out how to use technology to change the beliefs of “religious extremists”? Before you answer yes to that question, perhaps you should consider whether or not the U.S. government considers you to be a “religious extremist”. After all, conservatives, libertarians, Tea Party activists and evangelical Christians are all considered to be “extremists” in various U.S. government documents. So if we open up Pandora’s Box and say that it is okay for the government to use technology to wipe away the religious beliefs of some “extremists”, what would stop them from using that same technology on you someday? The truth is that this kind of technology should never be used on anyone, and it is very disturbing that the government seems so determined to develop it.
We would probably know very little about the development of this technology if a whistleblower had not recently come forward. The following is a YouTube video in which investigative reporter Ben Swann interviews this whistleblower and explains what the U.S. government is actually trying to do…

That video should chill you to the core.

And apparently this kind of technology already exists. It is called “Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation” and it can reportedly alter your most cherished beliefs. The following is a short excerpt from Ben Swann’s interview with the whistleblower that worked on this project…

Ben: Phase III is fairly interesting. I noticed in the documentation it says lets not talk too much about this because who knows if we’ll ever get there. But when you do read what Phase III is it is a little surprising, it’s called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. This is not something that’s science fiction, it’s not something they’ve cooked up. This is a real technique that’s already been used in the past, correct?

Whistleblower: Yes, it started out in the psychiatry field when people were depressed and when you’re depressed certain parts of your brain are not functioning correctly. So they created this technology, which is basically a big magnet, and you put it on their brain and it turns off that part of the brain that’s bad or wrong and it would help them with their depression for several weeks to a month and they’d go back and do it again. So this technology has been around for ten or fifteen years.

Ben: So it’s very high tech propaganda, what we’re talking about.

Whistleblower: High tech and validated propaganda, yes. So if they’re able to turn off a part of the brain and get rid of that master narrative that will make you not believe in a particular statement, they would have validated this propaganda. So if they turn off portion X, they know that the propaganda is going to work and the individual is going to believe whatever is being told to them.

Once the U.S. government starts using this technology on people, will there be any limit on who they can use it on?

As Ben Swann noted, the label “extremist” can be applied to almost any kind of religious belief…

After all, aren’t extremist Muslims dangerous? Extremist Christians? See the problem with the question is who gets to define extremist? Who decides if religious beliefs are inherently dangerous?

And if we believe that government should have the power to control how the extremist thinks… wouldn’t they have the authority to decide how and what we all think?

Don’t be tempted to think that this can’t happen. Just this week Fox News reported that the American Family Association, a very mainstream evangelical Christian organization, was classified as “a domestic hate group” during a U.S. Army briefing…

Several dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values.

The briefing was held at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and listed the AFA alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.

And this is hardly an isolated incident. In a previous article entitled “72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered ‘Potential Terrorists’ In Official Government Documents“, I listed a whole bunch of different types of Christians that are considered to be “extremists” in U.S. government documents.

And this attitude of animosity toward Christians is manifesting itself in a multitude of ways all over the country. In fact, according to the new Religious Hostility Survey, the number of incidents of hostility toward Christians in the United States is growing at a very frightening pace…

Hostility against Christian Americans is growing at an alarming rate, according to a new survey from the Family Research Council and Liberty Institute.

The Liberty Institute’s Jeff Mateer noted that while last year’s survey was based on 600 cases, “this survey that we’re releasing right now is almost 1,200. So we’ve almost doubled in just one year.”

One such case involved college student named Audrey Jarvis, who was asked twice to remove her cross, or at least hide it, at a student orientation.

“My supervisor came up to me out of nowhere and asked me to remove my cross necklace because he thought it would be offensive to incoming freshmen,” she recalled.

Will we eventually get to the point where evangelical Christianity is looked down upon so much in this nation that it is considered acceptable for the government to use technology to wipe away the religious beliefs of “extremist” Christians?

Once upon a time, it would have been insane to even suggest such a thing. But now the technology is being developed and mainstream evangelical Christians are being labeled as “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents.

It is frightening to think about where all of this might end up.

***

SHTFPlan.com


Report: Massive Vulnerability Detected In National Power Grids: “There Is No Way to Stop This”

Mac Slavo


October 21, 2013

If you think that our multi-billion dollar electrical power grids are secure and capable of withstanding a coordinated attack, think again.

Image: US Power Grid.

According to one group of engineers, the grid is so vulnerable that it wouldn’t even require a skilled hacker to compromise. In fact, when Adam Crain and Chris Sistrunk decided to test some new software they were developing they identified a vulnerability so serious that it could literally blind operational controllers to such an extent that they would be locked out of monitoring systems and unable to maintain grid integrity.

The consequences, according to the engineers who note they are in no way security specialists, could be a total downing of the national power grid with nodes across the nation being taken over all at once. Moreover, the same systems used to maintain the U.S. power grid are also being used in other industries, like water treatment facilities.

You’d think that such a vulnerability would be a top priority for the Department of Homeland Security, considering they are spending millions of dollars and promoting their coming Grid Ex exercise in November.

But you’d be wrong. The kicker is that when Crain and Sistrunk advised the DHS Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, they got what essentially amounts to no response. It took Homeland Security a full four months before they even acknowledged the problem.

The two engineers who discovered the vulnerability say little is being done.

Adam Crain and Chris Sistrunk do not specialize in security. The engineers say they hardly qualify as security researchers. But seven months ago, Mr. Crain wrote software to look for defects in an open-source software program.

The program targeted a very specific communications protocol called DNP3, which is predominantly used by electric and water companies, and plays a crucial role in so-called S.C.A.D.A. (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems. Utility companies use S.C.A.D.A. systems to monitor far-flung power stations from a control center, in part because it allows them to remotely diagnose problems rather than wait for a technician to physically drive out to a station and fix it.

Mr. Crain ran his security test on his open-source DNP3 program and didn’t find anything wrong. Frustrated, he tested a third-party vendor’s program to make sure his software was working. The first program he targeted belonged to Triangle MicroWorks, a Raleigh, North Carolina based company that sells source code to large vendors of S.C.A.D.A. systems.

It broke instantly.

“When Adam told me he broke Triangle, I worried everything else was broken,” said Mr. Sistrunk.

Over the course of one week last April, the two tested Mr. Crain’s software across 16 vendors’ systems. They did not find a single system they couldn’t break.

By the end of the week, the two had compiled a 20-page report replete with vulnerabilities in 16 different system vendors for the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, I.C.S.-C.E.R.T., which notifies vendors of vulnerabilities and issues public advisories.

And then, they waited. It would take I.C.S.-C.E.R.T. another four months to issue a public advisory for Triangle MicroWorks’ system.

…D.H.S. did not return a request for comment.

…

Mr. Crain found that he could actually infiltrate a power station’s control center from afar. An attacker could use that capability to insert malware to take over the system, and like Stuxnet, the computer worm that took out 20 percent of Iran’s centrifuges, inflict actual physical harm.

“This is low-hanging fruit,” said Mr. Crain. “It doesn’t require some kind of hacker mastermind to understand the protocol and do this.”

What makes the vulnerabilities particularly troubling, experts say, is that traditional firewalls are ill-equipped to stop them. “When the master crashes it can no longer monitor or control any and all of the substations,” said Dale Peterson, a former N.S.A. employee who founded Digital Bond, a security firm that focuses on infrastructure.

“There is no way to stop this with a firewall and other perimeter security device today.”

The New York Times

When outgoing DHS head Janet Napolitano suggested that a cyber attack on the nation’s power grid is imminent, she meant it.

They know that these systems are vulnerable, and the steps needed to protect the grid from cyber attacks and other potential hazards like a Super EMP or a severe geo-magnetic event would cost in the multiple billions of dollars to fix.

The fact of the matter is that DHS and the vendors who produce these software control systems are dragging their feet, leaving the entire country vulnerable.

Crain and Sistrunk are not hackers or security experts. They are software engineers and they were able to compromise our entire national power grid and water utility systems from remote locations.

What do you think China, Russia, and rogue hackers are capable of doing?

If you don’t think they’ve mapped our entire grid and its vulnerabilities you are kidding yourself.

This is deadly serious.

And when we say deadly, we mean it, because according to a report from the Center for Security Policy presented to Congress in 2010, if our power grid were to be taken offline for an extended period of time, 9 out of 10 Americans would be dead within a year.

There would be no way to transport food because gas stations pumps would be inoperable. And even if they did work, the commerce systems which makes the exchange of goods possible would be offline. Couple that with water utilities not functioning due to lack of electricity, and we’re talking about a worst-case scenario so bad that this country may never recover.

Former Congressman Roscoe Bartlet has urged those who can to move out of major cities for this reason.

(He (the anti-christ) shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time.? Daniel 11:24)

***

OffTheGridNews

NatGeo’s ‘American Blackout’ Examines U.S. Without Power

Written by: Tara Dodrill Alternative Energy October 18, 2013

What would you do if the world suddenly went dark?

That is exactly what NatGeo’s original movie American Blackout – which premieres Sunday, Oct. 27, seeks to discover. The power grid collapses following a cyber attack, forcing the nation into an immediate crisis. Although the man-made disaster lasts just 10 days, civil unrest, economic turmoil and a horrific amount of deaths still occur.

The National Geographic movie is extremely timely. As previously reported by Off The Grid News, the first ever nationwide power grid down drill will take place on Nov. 13-14.

American Blackout director Jonathan Rudd stated during a Q&A session for the media that a cyber attack was specifically chosen as the power grid disabler because such a scenario is no longer science fiction. As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported earlier this year, the United States experienced a 68 percent increase in “cyber incidents” at federal agencies during 2012. The DHS also warned that a cyber activity increase in America appears to include Middle Eastern nations such as Iran.

Rudd also said:

“The research drove the narrative. This film is obviously a drama, but we were determined to be as informed as possible and we spent countless hours trying to get it right. We needed to know everything that would be affected in a 10-day nationwide blackout … and that turned out to be basically everything. Our team of researchers interviewed leading experts in various fields — cyber security, search and rescue, emergency medicine, sociology, engineering and more. We also sent experts the film script to have them weigh in, and we made changes based on their feedback.”

The official promo description for the movie reads: “After it becomes clear that the blackout isn’t isolated to a small region, curiosity may turn to concern for the entire country. Electronic communication will become increasingly difficult, as most backup power systems are only capable of maintaining normal operations for short durations.”

Off The Grid News received an early copy of American Blackout to review. The movie was shot from a first-person user-generated point of view. It follows several families or groups as they deal with the power grid down scenario. Viewers may not be introduced to the character’s entire backstory, but quickly begin to feel that they not only “know” but can identify with the folks on the TV screen.

Jonathan Rudd utilized crowdsourcing and “Blair Witch”-style filming to tell this story.

“As viewers, we are watching more and more material online, and consequently becoming increasingly fluent in the visual language of user-generated film,” he said. “Because user-generated footage is shot by regular people, a more immediate connection can be drawn between the viewer and the event depicted. Our hope is that this very personalized form of reporting will allow us to immerse our audience in an intimate representation of how American people survived this event.”

The movie showcases a variety of characters, from all walks of life, areas of the country, and ages. It shows the dilemmas people who have food will be in when they encounter hungry neighbors and citizens.

Travis Fox, the award-winning producer of the Lights Out Saga, an upcoming independent feature-length film also about a downed power grid, weighed in on the moral dilemmas Americans will face during a disaster.

“I began delving into the morality and shades of gray that exist during a disaster,” Fox said. “People generally aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Good people will fight for or steal food if their kids are starving. The storyline of Mark’s brother [main character in Lights Out Saga] was a good example. Mark got mad that his brother took food from empty houses, but he had done very similar things in order to survive himself. The ‘good’ families turned away at the gate of their stronghold are another example of morally difficult situations. I think the key is keeping your capabilities discreet, your resources discreet, and your weaknesses discreet – and help people in need as best you can. I think as self-reliant people we have that moral obligation. But on the other hand, our families will always come first.”

The NatGeo cyber attack movie also includes a small group of college kids essentially trapped inside their urban dorm. The 20-somethings’ most advanced piece of survival gear is a fairly dirty bucket left lying around by maintenance staff. Fortunately for the coeds, it rains just barely enough during the power grid failure that they do not become dehydrated. One of the more industrious college students uses a plastic milk crate to craft a pigeon trap in order to garner some food. The scenes at the dormitory should serve as a teachable moment for parents of adult children away at school.

Dorm rooms do not have much storage space, but basic survival gear and some long-term storage food could mean the difference between life and death. Velcro a cushion on top of the food buckets, and they can serve as extra seating during late-night study sessions. A cache of food and water hidden somewhere near the dorm room could also help your scholar to survive.

Those of us who are dedicated to living a more self-reliant lifestyle will likely shake our heads and utter some unflattering phrases when we watch some of the folks attempt to provide even the most basic of necessities for themselves during the movie. Our disgust will not be at sloppy or unrealistic writing, quite to the contrary; it will be at the realistic portrayal of the ignorance of those living a blissfully unaware existence before it is too late. A character living in a NYC penthouse learns the hard way about the dangers of attempting to open one of their only cans of food with a massive butcher knife after the power grid goes down.

One of the most heartstring-tugging parts of the NatGeo movie was when a little girl is seen sadly waving good-bye to her father and saying in an adorable voice, “Bye-bye daddy … daddy when are you coming back … daddy?” Imagine the little boy at the end of Shane, add some pigtails and tear-stained cheeks and the scene is set. You just know that the worried man walking down the street desperately searching for food and water may never have the opportunity to hug his little girl again. The family uses candles for light, leaving them on throughout the night while daddy is away. It is not difficult to determine what will happen to the home and the mother, little girl, and newborn, as the flames wave near curtains as they fold their hands above their aching bellies and pray for daddy’s safe return.

The Essential Survival Secrets of The Most Vigilant…Most Skilled…Most Savvy Survivalists in the World!

During the American Blackout movie, a black screen occasionally appears and cites intriguing statistics about the consumption of government or commercial utility provided “necessities” and preparedness facts. Fires occur in cities, suburbs and rural areas in the days following the downed power grid. Firefighters roll all the engines they can on the precious fuel they have left, but water pressure and tank refilling problems cause the blazes to rage out of control.

One fact screen stated that 35,000 gallons of water are necessary to combat the average house fire. When I questioned a few local firefighters about the statistic, they said the figure was about right, but probably a low estimate for structures in a rural area. Fire departments serving remote areas have to travel further to reach the emergency, allowing the fire to grow and require more water to fight. Two-story homes, big old farmhouses, and adjacent barns and storage buildings pose additional fire hazards.

When asked what he hoped the audience would take away from American Blackout, director Rudd said:

“That a sensible amount of preparation is advisable over keeping two cans of tuna in the kitchen. America is defined by its spirit of resilience and this film affirms that; even in the deepest of crises, people can pull through. I am currently on the lookout for a set of large barrels for water storage and a wind-up radio, while our drama producer has already hosted a neighborhood meeting and is stockpiling bottled water.

Research for American Blackout included working with leading experts in the cyber security, emergency medicine, search and rescue, engineering and sociology fields. Additional preparedness related experts were sent copies of the script for their input and some changes made based upon their recommendations. Power blackouts which have occurred in San Diego and New York City, as well as following Hurricane Sandy, were also used to help craft the film and develop realistic disaster scenarios and government response.

In the NatGeo film, the United States is so crippled by the downed power grid that the United Nations is called in to help – a scenario many Americans would probably like to avoid. The disaster movie does show President Obama several times, as updates are given to the masses about the nature and likely duration of the blackout, but the film is not at all political in nature. The fact that the most amazing country ever formed lacked the resources necessary to initiate its own recovery and is left to the mercy of foreign nations, should serve as a stark warning about our country’s vul

American Blackout premiers on the National Geographic channel on October 27.

***

Mainstream journalists expose 9/11 hoax

Dr. Kevin Barrett


Press TV


October 20, 2013

American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author Seymour Hersh.

Several leading American mainstream journalists say that the US government is lying about 9/11 and the so-called war on terror. Unfortunately, media owners and editors won’t let them report their findings.

Recently, Seymour Hersh, America’s top mainstream investigative reporter, broke the news that the US government’s claim to have killed Osama Bin Laden on May 2nd, 2011 is “a big lie. There is not one word of truth in it.”

Hersh went on to harshly criticize his long-time employer, the New York Times, and other big media outlets: “We lie about everything, lying has become the staple.” He said all big US media outlets should be shut down for lying to the American people.

Other mainstream journalists agree that the US government’s story of Osama Bin Laden and 9/11 is a big lie. Sherwood Ross, an award-winning journalist who has worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago, the Chicago Daily News, and for Reuters and other wire services, told me in a recent radio interview:

“It’s very doubtful that Muslims were behind 9/11. Think about this for one minute: That President Bush’s family had done business with the family of the man who allegedly made the terrorist attack, Osama Bin Laden. The Bin Laden family was actually on the board of Bush’s oil company. How is it possible that of all the billions of families in the world, the one family that makes the attack on America has done business with the President of America. That sounds more like a favor than anything else. I don’t think 9/11 was an Arab conspiracy or a Muslim conspiracy. I think it’s an American conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States and install what is becoming a police state, and also to advance the imperial ambitions of the United States, to swindle the Middle East out of their energy resources.”

Ross explained that American journalists are no longer free to expose even the most outrageous official falsehoods and fabrications:

“You don’t see any serious questioning by the mainstream media. I thought one of the tip-offs that it was a put-up job was when a cameraman from a little weekly in Pennsylvania went to the site where this airliner had supposedly crashed (on 9/11). And he said, ‘I didn’t see any airliner. I saw a hole in the ground. I didn’t see any bodies. I didn’t see any luggage.’ All right, maybe that guy just made this up. But I don’t think so. I think he was just doing his job. And then at the Pentagon, you had the claim that airliner hit it. But again, there was no wreckage. Reporters who worked in the Press Room at the Pentagon went out there on the lawn, and they couldn’t see any airliner. So, over and over again, you have manufactured lies that the press largely is not reporting.”

I asked Ross whether he is allowed to express such views in his articles for the Miami Herald, the Chicago Daily News, or the wire services. He answered:

“Absolutely not. When I used to write for Reuters, covering workplace issues, for ten years, my columns were picked up from the New York Times to the L.A. Times. But if you write about ‘why did 7 World Trade Center collapse when it wasn’t hit by an airplane,’ nobody will pick it up. So, now my columns are used on the Internet by bloggers, and they’re used by Middle East wire services. I get phone calls from Press TV, and you can read my interviews there. But you won’t see me quoted by the Associated Press.”

Another leading American journalist, Paul Craig Roberts, has also been banned from US mainstream media for telling the truth about 9/11. Dr. Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, won the French Legion of Honor and other awards for his contributions to economics, and has been a regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and other mainstream publications. But since he spoke out about the controlled demolitions of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11, Paul Craig Roberts has been put on the mainstream media’s no-publish list.

In a recent interview on my radio show, Dr. Roberts explained why the US mainstream media, as Seymour Hersh said, lies about everything:

“One of the worst things that ever happened (to America) was when President Clinton allowed five companies to concentrate the American media. That destroyed its independence. And ever since Clinton permitted that, which was totally against all American tradition, and totally against the antitrust law … but in the United States, as we’ve seen, law doesn’t mean anything anymore. The minute these five conglomerates concentrated the media, the independence of the media disappeared. It’s no longer run by journalists, it’s run by corporate advertising executives. The value of these media conglomerates resides in their federal broadcast licenses. And so they can’t dare offend the government. Their licenses may not get renewed, and the entire multi-billion-dollar value of the companies would disappear. So, the so-called mainstream media is no longer the media. It doesn’t tell you anything. It’s a propaganda ministry – the Ministry of Propaganda. Gerald Celente calls them ‘presstitutes.’”

Rather than writing for the mainstream media, Paul Craig Roberts is now exposing the fake killing of Osama Bin Laden and deconstructing the 9/11 false-flag operation for an independent outlet called the Institute for Political Economy. In a recent article published on the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Roberts wrote:

“The neoconservatives who advocate America’s hegemony over the world called for ‘a new Pearl Harbor’ that would allow them to launch wars of conquest … No evidence exists that supports the government’s 9/11 story … On this 12th anniversary of a false-flag event, it is unnecessary for me to report the voluminous evidence that conclusively proves that the official story is a lie. You can read it for yourself. It is available online. You can read what the architects and engineers (for 9/11 truth) have to say. You can read the scientists’ reports. You can hear from the first responders who were in the WTC towers. You can read the pilots who say that the maneuvers associated with the airliner that allegedly hit the Pentagon are beyond their skills and most certainly were not performed by inexperienced pilots. You can read David Griffin’s many books. You can watch the film produced by Richard Gage and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 truth. You can read the 9/11 Toronto Report, International Hearings on 9/11.”

But don’t bother reading the mainstream media. As Seymour Hersh, Sherwood Ross, Paul Craig Roberts, and a rapidly growing number of ordinary Americans realize, the mainstream media’s motto is now: “We lie about everything. Lying has become the staple.”

The government’s not demanding an investigation into an event that is the greatest embarrassment to a “superpower” in world history is a complete give-away that 9/11 was a false-flag event.

***

(Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. John 8:32, John 14:6, Matthew 4:16)

***

Forbes

The International Monetary Fund Lays The Groundwork For Global Wealth Confiscation

10/15/2013

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) quietly dropped a bomb in its October Fiscal Monitor Report. Titled “Taxing Times,” the report paints a dire picture for advanced economies with high debts that fail to aggressively “mobilize domestic revenue.” It goes on to build a case for drastic measures and recommends a series of escalating income and consumption tax increases culminating in the direct confiscation of assets.

Yes, you read that right. But don’t take it from me. The report itself says:

“The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy”— a one-off tax on private wealth—as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). … The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be weighed against the risks of the alternatives, which include repudiating public debt or inflating it away. … The tax rates needed to bring down public debt to precrisis levels, moreover, are sizable: reducing debt ratios to end-2007 levels would require (for a sample of 15 euro area countries) a tax rate of about 10 percent on households with positive net wealth. (page 49)”

Note three takeaways. First, IMF economists know there are not enough rich people to fund today’s governments even if 100 percent of the assets of the 1 percent were expropriated. That means that all households with positive net wealth—everyone with retirement savings or home equity—would have their assets plundered under the IMF’s formulation.

Second, such a repudiation of private property will not pay off Western governments’ debts or fund budgets going forward. It will merely “restore debt sustainability,” allowing free-spending sovereigns to keep tapping the bond markets until the next crisis comes along—for which stronger measures will be required, of course.

Third, should politicians fail to muster the courage to engage in this kind of wholesale robbery, the only alternative scenario the IMF posits is public debt repudiation and hyperinflation. Structural reform proposals for the Ponzi-scheme entitlement programs that are bankrupting us are nowhere to be seen.

If ever there were a roadmap for prompting massive capital flight and emigration of productive citizens toward capitalism’s nascent frontiers in Asia, this is it.

The IMF justifies its tax increases by highlighting trends in income inequality along with a claimed decline in the progressivity of most income tax regimes. Using “perceived equity” (otherwise known as “envy”) as the key metric motivating tax policy, the report intentionally conflates tax rates with tax revenue, lamenting a decline in the top marginal income tax rates paid by the highest earners. Never mind that these high earners have been forking over more money, a higher percentage of their gross income, and a larger share of aggregate national tax revenue in recent years. It also ignores the Laffer Curve effects that are clearly visible in the data. As for incentive, the report pays no heed to the idea that wealth and income can only be taxed if someone is motivated to create it.

The report’s most chilling aspect is the clinical manner in which it discusses how to restrict the mobility of the rich, along with the inconvenience of factoring in their “well being.” Again, to quote the report:

“Financial wealth is mobile, and so, ultimately, are people. … There may be a case for taxing different forms of wealth differently according to their mobility … Substantial progress likely requires enhanced international cooperation to make it harder for the very well-off to evade taxation by placing funds elsewhere.

“A revenue-maximizing approach to taxing the rich effectively puts a weight of zero on their well-being—contentious, to say the least. What then if some weight is indeed attached to the well-being of the richest? Figure 19 provides a way to think about the trade-off between equity and efficiency considerations in setting the top marginal rate in that case. … If one attaches less weight to those with the highest incomes, the vote would be to increase the top marginal rate.”

Yes, this is where the bankruptcy of the modern entitlement state is taking us—capital controls and exit restrictions so the proverbial four wolves and a lamb can vote on what’s for dinner. That’s the only way to keep citizens worried about ending up on the menu from voting with their feet. Again, straight from the report:

“There is a surprisingly large amount of experience to draw on, as such levies were widely adopted in Europe after World War I.”

And we all know how well that worked out.

WealthDaily.com

Coming Economic Collapse

Top Economic Advisers Forecast War and Unrest

Posted on October 20, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Kyle Bass, Larry Edelson, Charles Nenner, James Dines, Nouriel Roubini, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Jim Rickards and Martin Armstrong Warn or War

We’re already at war in numerous countries all over the world.

But top economic advisers warn that economic factors could lead to a new world war.

Kyle Bass writes:

Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn. Sadly, looking back through economic history, all too often war is the manifestation of simple economic entropy played to its logical conclusion. We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation.

Larry Edelson wrote an email to subscribers entitled “What the “Cycles of War” are saying for 2013″, which states:

Since the 1980s, I’ve been studying the so-called “cycles of war” — the natural rhythms that predispose societies to descend into chaos, into hatred, into civil and even international war.

I’m certainly not the first person to examine these very distinctive patterns in history. There have been many before me, notably, Raymond Wheeler, who published the most authoritative chronicle of war ever, covering a period of 2,600 years of data.

However, there are very few people who are willing to even discuss the issue right now. And based on what I’m seeing, the implications could be absolutely huge in 2013.

Former Goldman Sachs technical analyst Charles Nenner – who has made some big accurate calls, and counts major hedge funds, banks, brokerage houses, and high net worth individuals as clients – says there will be “a major war starting at the end of 2012 to 2013”, which will drive the Dow to 5,000.

Veteran investor adviser James Dines forecast a war is epochal as World Wars I and II, starting in the Middle East.

Nouriel Roubini has warned of war with Iran. And when Roubini was asked:

Where does this all lead us? The risk in your view is of another Great Depression. But even respectable European politicians are talking not just an economic depression but possibly even worse consequences over the next decade or so. Bearing European history in mind, where does this take us?

He responded:

In the 1930s, because we made a major policy mistake, we went through financial instability, defaults, currency devaluations, printing money, capital controls, trade wars, populism, a bunch of radical, populist, aggressive regimes coming to power from Germany to Italy to Spain to Japan, and then we ended up with World War II.

Now I’m not predicting World War III but seriously, if there was a global financial crisis after the first one, then we go into depression: the political and social instability in Europe and other advanced economies is going to become extremely severe. And that’s something we have to worry about.

Billionaire investor Jim Rogers notes:

A continuation of bailouts in Europe could ultimately spark another world war, says international investor Jim Rogers.

“Add debt, the situation gets worse, and eventually it just collapses. Then everybody is looking for scapegoats. Politicians blame foreigners, and we’re in World War II or World War whatever.”

Marc Faber says that the American government will start new wars in response to the economic crisis:

• “The next thing the government will do to distract the attention of the people on bad economic conditions is they’ll start a war somewhere.”

• “If the global economy doesn’t recover, usually people go to war.”

We’re in the middle of a global currency war – i.e. a situation where nations all compete to devalue their currencies the most in order to boost exports. And Brazilian president-elect Rousseff said in 2010:

The last time there was a series of competitive devaluations … it ended in world war two.

Jim Rickards agrees:

Currency wars lead to trade wars, which often lead to hot wars. In 2009, Rickards participated in the Pentagon’s first-ever “financial” war games. While expressing confidence in America’s ability to defeat any other nation-state in battle, Rickards says the U.S. could get dragged into “asymmetric warfare,” if currency wars lead to rising inflation and global economic uncertainty.

As does Jim Rogers:

Trade wars always lead to wars.

Martin Armstrong wrote in August:

Our greatest problem is the bureaucracy wants a war. This will distract everyone from the NSA and justify what they have been doing. They need a distraction for the economic decline that is coming.

Armstrong argued last month that war plans against Syria are really about debt and spending:

The Syrian mess seems to have people lining up on Capital Hill when sources there say the phone calls coming in are overwhelmingly against any action. The politicians are ignoring the people entirely. This suggests there is indeed a secret agenda to achieve a goal outside the discussion box. That is most like the debt problem and a war is necessary to relief the pressure to curtail spending.

And given that many influential economists wrongly believe that war is good for the economy … many are overtly or quietly pushing for war.

Moreover, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said that the Iraq war was really about oil , and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. And see this and this. If that war was for petroleum, other oil-rich countries might be invaded as well.

And the American policy of using the military to contain China’s growing economic influence – and of considering economic rivalry to be a basis for war – are creating a tinderbox.

Finally, multi-billionaire investor Hugo Salinas Price says:

What happened to [Libya's] Mr. Gaddafi, many speculate the real reason he was ousted was that he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The same thing happened to him that happened to Saddam because the US doesn’t want any solid competing currency out there vs the dollar. You know Gaddafi was talking about a gold dinar.

Indeed, senior CNBC editor John Carney noted:

Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.

Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal thinks the central banking initiative reveals that foreign powers may have a strong influence over the rebels.

This suggests we have a bit more than a ragtag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” Wenzel writes.

Indeed, some say that recent wars have really been about bringing all countries into the fold of Western central banking.

Many Warn of Unrest

Numerous economic organizations and economists also warn of crash-induced unrest, including:

• The head of the World Trade Organization

• The head of the International Monetary Fund

• The head of the World Bank

• Leading economic historian Niall Ferguson

• Leading economist John Williams

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Washington's Blog

The REAL Reason for Saudi Arabia’s Shift Away from U.S.

Washington’s Blog
October 24, 2013

Saudi Arabia has warned of a shift away from the U.S.

Here’s the real reason: China just dethroned the U.S. as the world’s largest importer of oil.

As Oil Price notes:

Last month the world witnessed a paradigm shift: China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest consumer of foreign oil, importing 6.3 million barrels per day compared to the United States’ 6.24 million. This trend is likely to continue and this gap is likely to grow, according to the EIA’s October short-term energy outlook. Wood Mackenzie, a leading global energy consultancy, echoed this prediction, estimating Chinese oil imports will rise to 9.2 million barrels per day (70% of total demand) by 2020.

Forget Syria, Iran and Bahrain … the stated reasons for the Saudi shift.

Those are all real … but the much bigger driver is oil. Indeed, most geopolitical policy is based upon oil (and here) and gas.

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(We can not vouch for the veracity of the following two videos but we did find them of interest in keeping with the end times.)

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Newcastle Herald

The ocean is broken

By GREG RAY

Oct. 18, 2013, 10 p.m.

Ivan Macfadyen aboard the Funnel Web


IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.

Not the absence of sound, exactly.

The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.

And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.

"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.

But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.

No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.

"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.

And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.

"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."

But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.

"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.

"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.

"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.

"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.

No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.

If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.

Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.

"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.

Not this time.

"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.

"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.

"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.

"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.

"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.

"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."

Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.

And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.

BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.

"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.

He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.

More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.

Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.

"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

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CNN

The Roma: A thousand years of discrimination continues in Europe, advocates say

By David Simpson, CNN

October 21, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

EU agency: 90% of Roma live below poverty line

Roma are Europe's largest minority

Roma arrived from India about 1,000 years ago, usually unwelcome in Europe

School segregation, forced evictions are among issues

(CNN) -- From the time they entered Europe from India a thousand years ago, the Roma were targets of discrimination.

Countries passed laws to suppress their culture and keep them out of the mainstream -- and sometimes went much further. Roma were enslaved in Hungary and Romania in the 15th century and targeted for extermination by Nazi Germany 500 years later.

Estimates of Romani deaths in the Holocaust range from 25% to 70% of the Roma population in Europe.

Many Roma remain on the fringes of mainstream European society -- a fact underscored in the current case of a Romani couple accused of child abduction in Greece. The fair-skinned child caught the eyes of authorities when they visited a Roma community. The couple's attorney says they adopted the child from the biological mother but didn't go through a legal process.

Rights groups say the latest case is bound to shine a harsh spotlight once again on the Roma.

"The risk of this case is to further put more stereotype and racism on the general picture of the Roma community," said Dezideriu Gergely, executive director of European Roma Rights Centre.

"What is important here is to understand that this case is not one that defines the Roma. It is a case that needs to be looked at as an individual case and that could happen in any minority group. Not culturally related to the Roma minority or ethnically related to the Roma minority. Criminality is not ethnically related."

How are the Roma today?

Today, one in three Roma in Europe are unemployed and 90% live below the poverty line, according to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Human Rights.

Many Roma continue to live in camps or caravans, but it's hard to say how many prefer that lifestyle and how many simply cannot find a way to settle down.

Advocates say the Roma are denied a fair chance to secure housing, employment and education. And the EU human rights agency said governments must act to stop the "exclusion" of the Roma from mainstream society.

How many people are Romani?

From 10 million to 12 million in Europe, according to the EU human rights agency, which said last year that the Roma are Europe's largest minority. Most live in southern and eastern Europe, although they can be found throughout the continent.

What is their language?

The Romani language includes multiple dialects, all evolved from Sanskrit. The language is largely unwritten, however, because of the high rates of illiteracy in most Roma communities, according to information from Minnesota State University.

What is their religion?

Some are Christian and some are Muslim, having converted while migrating through Persia and the Balkans, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Why were they called gypsies?

Because when they entered Europe -- perhaps from the 8th to 10th centuries, although scholars differ on the timeline -- people mistakenly thought they came from Egypt. Actually, they originated in the Punjab region of India. The term "gypsy" is considered pejorative by some Roma. Romani scholar Ian Hancock, a Romani raised in Great Britiain, says the term falsely implies that Roma are not a race -- that they are simply a group choosing a lifestyle.

Why did the Roma become nomads?

Probably because they were distrusted and discriminated against by Europeans. Like Jews, the Roma often were prohibited from buying land or entering the more stable occupations. At some point, the nomadic lifestyle became the norm for them. By the 20th century, the number of truly nomadic Roma began declining. Some advocates say many Europeans wrongly assume all Roma still want to be nomads -- and use that belief to justify authorities' failure to provide housing when they evict Roma from camps.

What kind of discrimination did they face?

Roma were living in Spain, France, England, and large parts of what is today Russia and Eastern Europe by the late 1400s. They suffered persecution in those countries ranging from laws against their language and dress to expulsion, according to Minnesota State. In the beginning of the 15th century, many Roma were forced into slavery by Hungarian and Romanian nobles who needed laborers for their large estates, according to the university.

Roma suffered persecution during World War II. The Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior," according to the Holocaust museum. "Their fate in some ways paralleled that of the Jews," the museum said. The Nazis subjected Roma to internment, forced labor, and murder.

"While exact figures or percentages cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their allies killed around 25% of all European Roma," the museum says. "Of slightly less than 1 million Roma believed to have been living in Europe before the war, the Germans and their Axis partners killed up to 220,000."

Is the modern discrimination just economic?

Amnesty International says European governments continue to actively discriminate against the Roma.

The organization says the French government, ignoring court rulings, continues to evict people from Roma settlements with inadequate provision for other housing.

Amnesty International is spotlighting segregation of Romani children in schools in Slovakia.

School segregation also has been an issue in Greece. The European Court for Human Rights ruled that Greek authorities discriminated against Roma children in the town of Aspropyrgos, where non-Roma parents in 2005 blockaded an elementary school to demonstrate against the admission of Roma children. The Roma children were placed in a separate building.

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Mirror News

Homeless to live in shipping containers for up to five years in bid to tackle housing shortage

By Paul Cockerton

21 Oct 2013

The converted containers will provide temporary homes for a period of five years for 36 men and women with a history of homelessness

Artist's impression: The converted containers will provide temporary homes

Homeless people will be able to move into shipping containers in a former scrap metal yard in a bid to tackle a city's housing shortage.

The converted containers will provide temporary homes for a period of five years for 36 men and women with a history of homelessness.

Six containers are due to arrive in the New England Quarter of Brighton, East Sussex, today with a further 30 arriving by the end of the week.

Ross Gilbert, from developers QED, said the first residents are expected to move into the containers in about five weeks' time, turning the "exciting and innovative housing concept into reality".

He said: "Our temporary use of land earmarked for future regeneration demonstrates just what can be done in the interim to help solve the acute housing shortage."

Moving in: Shipping container arrives at site

The units were designed and constructed in Holland in 2010 by TempoHousing, Brighton Housing Trust chief executive Andy Winter said,

In a blog post on the BHT website, Mr Winter wrote that shipping containers had rarely been used as temporary living accommodation in the UK.

However, were a number of examples in continental Europe, with the most notable project in Keetwonen, Amsterdam, a development by TempoHousing of 1,000 containers which was completed in 2006 and is still in use.

When the land being used for the Brighton project is eventually redeveloped, the accommodation units could be transferred to other locations, the charity said.

Home sweet home: 36 people will live in the containers

Mr Winter said: "This is an exciting moment in this project to provide 36 new homes for men and women in housing need.

"We have identified 21 of the first 36 residents and they are being prepared to move into their new homes.

"The residents will have completed one of BHT's programme for change and will free up space in other services that will be able to take in men and women who are currently on the streets.

"There is an acute shortage of affordable accommodation in Brighton and Hove and, in a landlords' market, particularly for those with a history of homelessness.

"The number of street homeless people in the city has increased from 37 in November 2011 to 43 in November 2012.

"However, there is a wide consensus that the actual figure is more likely to be between 70 and 100."

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Natural Blaze

10 Reasons You Should Be Eating Olives

By John Summerly

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Even though more attention is usually given to their delicious oil than the whole food itself, olives are one of the world's most widely enjoyed fruits.

Yes, they are fruits even though most of us think of them as zesty vegetables.

Here are 10 reasons why you should be eating these little delicacies every day.

1. Cardiovascular Benefits

When free radicals oxidize cholesterol, blood vessels are damaged and fat builds up in arteries, possibly leading to a heart attack. The antioxidant nutrients in black olives impede this oxidation of cholesterol, thereby helping to prevent heart disease. Olives do contain fat, but it's the healthy monounsaturated kind, which has been found to shrink the risk of atherosclerosis and increase good cholesterol. When diets low in monounsaturated fat are altered to increase the monounsaturated fat content (without becoming too high in total fat), research study participants typically experience a decrease in their blood cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and LDL:HDL ratio. All of these changes lower our risk of heart disease.

Recent research studies have also shown that the monounsaturated fat found in olives (and olive oil) can help to decrease blood pressure. The oleic acid found in olives--once absorbed up into the body and transported to our cells--can change signaling patterns at a cell membrane level (specifically, altering G-protein associated cascades). These changes at a cell membrane level result in decreased blood pressure.

2. Weight Loss

It appears that monounsaturated fats, the kind found in olives, when replacing saturated fats, may encourage weight loss. Olive oil consumption has been shown to breakdown fats inside fat cells, get rid of belly fat and reduce insulin insensitivity.

People who have the highest olive consumption eat fewer calories overall and are rarely overweight. Blood tests show they have higher levels of serotonin, a so-called satiety hormone that makes us feel full.

The aroma extracts from olive oil can leave us feeling fuller, cutting our calorie intake by almost 200 a day, they said.

3. Cancer Prevention

The antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of olives make them a natural for protection against cancer because chronic oxidative stress and chronic inflammation can be key factors in the development of cancer. If our cells get overwhelmed by oxidative stress (damage to cell structure and cell function by overly reactive oxygen-containing molecules) and chronic excessive inflammation, our risk of cell cancer is increased. By providing us with rich supplies of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrients, olives can help us avoid this dangerous combination of chronic oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.

Black olives are a great source of vitamin E, which has the brilliant ability to neutralize free radicals in body fat. Especially when working with the stable monounsaturated fats found in olives, vitamin E can make cellular processes safer. When such processes such as mitochondrial energy production are not well protected, the free radicals produced can cause oxidation, damaging a cell's mitochondria, and preventing the cell from producing enough energy to supply its needs. If the DNA of a cell is damaged, it may well mutate and become cancerous. Studies have shown that a diet supplemented with olive oil leads to a lower risk of colon cancer, almost as low a risk as a diet rich in fish oil.

4. Less Pain

Spanish-style green olives, Kalamata-style olives, and many different methods of olive preparation provide us with valuable amounts of many different antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrients which can act as a natural Ibuprofen. Their oils contain oleocanthal, a substance with anti-inflammatory agents. Similar to classical NSAIDs, they are a type of non-selective inhibitor of cyclooxygenase (COX). 50g (more than three and a half tablespoons) of a typical virgin olive oil per day contains an amount of oleocanthal with similar anti-inflammatory effect as 1/10 of the adult ibuprofen dose.

5. Skin and Hair Health

Black olives are rich in fatty acids and antioxidants that nourish, hydrate and protect. Chief among those is vitamin E. Whether applied topically or ingested, vitamin E has been shown to protect skin from ultraviolet radiation, thus guarding against skin cancer and premature aging. You can gain a healthy, glowing complexion by washing your face in warm water, applying a few drops of olive oil to vulnerable spots, and letting it work its magic for 15 minutes before rinsing it off. In fact, you can moisturize with olive oil before any bath, and even condition your hair with it by mixing it with an egg yolk and leaving it before rinsing and washing.

6. Less Allergies

New research may help explain how olives work to provide us with anti-inflammatory benefits, especially during circumstances involving allergy. Olive extracts have now been shown to function as anti-histamines at a cellular level. By blocking special histamine receptors (called H1 receptors), unique components in olive extracts may help to lessen a cell's histamine response. Because histamine is a molecule that can get overproduced in allergy-related conditions and can be a key player in the inflammatory process, it's likely that the anti-inflammatory benefits we get from olives involve this anti-histamine pathway. It's also possible that olives may have a special role to play as part of an overall anti-allergenic diet. Your circulation will improve and you’ll be able to breath easier with olive consumption. They can increase blood flow and help lessen the effects of illnesses such as asthma through its anti-inflammatory properties.

7. Digestive Tract Health

Frequent consumption of both vitamin E and the monounsaturated fats in black olives is associated with lower rates of colon cancer. These nutrients help prevent colon cancer by neutralizing free radicals. Olive oil's protective function also has a beneficial effect on ulcers and gastritis. Olive oil activates the secretion of bile and pancreatic hormones much more naturally than prescribed drugs, thereby lowering the incidence of gallstone formation. A cup of black olives also contains 17% of the daily allowance of fiber, which promotes digestive tract health by helping to move food through the system at a healthier pace. This keeps any one part of the digestive tract from having to work too hard and supports the ideal balance of chemicals and populations of microorganisms required for a healthy digestive system.

8. Good Source of Iron

Olives, especially black are very high in iron. The ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body is due to the presence of iron in the blood. If we suffer from a lack of iron, our tissues don't get enough oxygen, and we may feel cold or weak. Iron also plays a vital role in the production of energy. It is a necessary part of a number of enzymes, including iron catalase, iron peroxidase, and the cytochrome enzymes. It also helps produce carnitine, a nonessential amino acid important for the utilization of fat. To top it all off, the proper function of the immune system is dependent on sufficient iron.

9. Eye Health

One cup of olives contains ten percent of the daily recommended allowance of vitamin A which, when converted into the retinal form, is crucial for healthy eyes. It enables the eye to better distinguish between light and dark, thereby improving night vision. Furthermore, Vitamin A is believed effective against cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma and other age-related ocular diseases.

10. Increases Blood Levels of Glutathione

Olives have shown the ability to increase blood levels of glutathione (one of the body's premier antioxidant nutrients). Consumption of olive pulp is associated with significantly increased glutathione levels in the blood and improvement in antioxidant capacity.

How to Select Olives

While olives have been traditionally sold in jars and cans, many stores are now offering them in bulk in large barrels or bins (often called an "olive bar"). Buying bulk olives will allow you to experiment with many different types with which you may be unfamiliar and to purchase only as many as you need at one time.

While whole olives are very common, you may also find ones that have been pitted, as well as olives that have been stuffed with either peppers, garlic or almonds. If you purchase olives in bulk, make sure that the store has a good turnover and keeps their olives immersed in brine for freshness and to retain moistness. Some grocers will also use genetically modified oils such as Canola which should be avoided.

Avoid purchasing olives in cans. FDA data has shown levels of acrylamide as high as 1,925 ppb in some canned, nationally distributed brands of black pitted olives. Based on this data, higher acrylamide levels in select canned black olives may be related to specific handling, storage, processing (especially preservation and darkening methods), and heating steps that favored formation of acrylamide.

When selecting olives, beware of the label description, "hand-picked." This description does not necessarily tell you anything helpful about the olive harvesting. Many olives are hand-picked, even though the product label makes no mention of this fact. Conversely, olives with have been mechanically harvested with a hand-held pneumatic rake are sometimes labeled as "hand-picked."

As far olive oils go, the best processing come from ice-pressed oils which is in the complete absence of heat; a dramatic 20-30 times colder than the cold-pressed olive oil; a critical distinction in terms of maintaining the oils’ nutritive and healing potential and to staking claim as one of the world’s only RAW producers of olive oil. Taste the distinct refreshing taste!

John Summerly is nutritionist, herbologist, and homeopathic practitioner. He is a leader in the natural health community and consults athletes, executives and most of all parents of children on the benefits of complementary therapies for health and prevention.

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

“His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree.”
(Hosea 14:6)