“And one week shall establish the covenant with many: and in the midst of the week my sacrifice and drink-offering shall be taken away: and on the temple shall be the abomination of desolations; and at the end of time an end shall be put to the desolation.”

(Daniel 9:27)
On The Temple

*

Dear Friends,

The following is a response to one of our readers concerning a question posed by the biblical author Carl Gallups.

“Does a Third Temple have to be built in order for Jesus to return?What does the Bible really say about this topic in proper context?”

To begin, I use the Septuagint version of the Old Testament as my source for Old Testament scripture. I explained the reason for this in a somewhat lengthy essay I did some years back and published on “People of the Keys”. (See below)

I'll start by saying I am in disagreement with Carl on this particular point. I will say, however, that I find him not overly dogmatic and he does leave room for a literal rebuilt Jewish temple. A good verse to remember here is:

“Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” 2 Peter 1:20

Carl Gallups says,

“...The whole scene [Rev. 11] is laid in heaven, and the temple that is measured is the heavenly temple (11:19; 15:5). We have only to compare this vision with the parallel vision of a measuring-reed seen by Ezekiel (ch. 40), in which the prophet is commanded to measure— surely not the city which it is stated had been demolished fourteen years previously, but the city of the future seen by the prophet in vision (Salmon: 1904, 238).” Carl Gallups

Of the thirteen verses that contain the word “temple” in Revelation, all but two of these verses speak of what would appear to be a literal temple. If you look at the verses it is evident that all of the verses, except Revelation 11:1-2, are referring to the temple of God in heaven. (Some verses mention temple twice.) This heavenly temple is first mentioned in Revelation 7:15 and last mentioned in Revelation 16:17 when the seventh vial of the wrath of God is poured out.

Looking at the chronology of the scriptures it is evident from Revelation 7:15 that this temple in heaven was in existence before the temple in Revelation 11:1-2 is mentioned. This temple apparently existed before the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven vials are opened. If you want to go even further back David said:

“The Lord is in his holy temple, as for the Lord, his throne is in heaven: his eyes look upon the poor, his eyelids try the sons of men.” Psalm 11:4

“One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I earnestly seek: that I should dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life, that I should behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and survey his temple.” Psalm 23:4

Remember, David said this before the first temple was built, although it is possible he could be referring to the future building of Solomon's temple, although he never saw the “holy temple” or dwelt in it.

If you are familiar with Exekiel's Temple described in Ezekiel chapters 40-48 it would seem to be, for want of a better phrase, a brick and mortar structure. In Jerusalem at the “Temple Institute” you can purchase a wooden model of Ezekiel's temple.

See also the attached document, “The Third Temple”.

“God will have a temple and an altar in the world, till the end of time.” Carl Gallups

I am not quite sure what he means here, whether he is referring to Revelation 10:6. or to eternity.

“And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:” Rev10:6

Just to be clear though, we know from Revelation that in the New Heaven there will be no need for a temple.

“And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.” Rev 21:22

“Nowhere in the New Testament does any writer, or speaker, ever directly address the rebuilding of a third literal temple building on the Temple Mount.”

Carl Gallups

2 Thessalonians 2:4 would seem to indicate otherwise:

“Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.”

Carl references this verse himself which clearly shows the anti-christ is sitting in a temple that belongs to God. Mark references the same scenario:

“But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not...” Mark13:14

“And seeds shall spring up out of him, and they shall profane the sanctuary of strength, and they shall remove the perpetual sacrifice, and make the abomination desolate.” Daniel 11:31

{Profane: “Treat something sacred with irreverence of disrespect”.}

Two other verses to look at...

“When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” Acts1:6,7

Jesus didn't contest that the kingdom of Israel would one day be restored but simply said it was not for them to know when this would happen. Would a restored kingdom of Isreal require a temple?

And finally the reason for the explanation of the Septuagint in the beginning is that not all translations use the word “temple”. The King James version does not whereas the Septuagint and 7 other versions on 'Bible Hub' do.

“And one week shall establish the covenant with many: and in the midst of the week my sacrifice and drink-offering shall be taken away: and on the temple shall be the abomination of desolations; and at the end of time an end shall be put to the desolation.” Daniel 9:27

That's it for now.

God bless,
Robert

** Why I use the Septuagint.

To summarize the reason for this is because the original Hebrew usage of the scriptures had mostly fallen into disuse by the third century BC.

“The Greek translation was originally created for use by the Alexandrian Jews who were fluent in Koine Greek, but not in Hebrew. Thus the Septuagint is sometimes called the 'Apostle's Bible' and was the one that Jesus and His disciples would have had access to. It is quoted in the New Testament by writers such as the Apostle Paul, and remained the Scripture of use by the Apostolic Fathers.”

A sub set of Jews known as the Masoretes took it upon themselves to re-translate the Koine Greek Bible into what is today modern Hebrews. (It should be mentioned that modern Hebrew bears no resemblance to the original Paleo Hebrew text. Moses, who wrote the Torah, would not be able to read modern Hebrew.) It should also be noted that certain changes were made in the re-translation, for example the word Christ, which appeared in the original Koine Greek six times. was omitted in the re-translation.

“But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?” John 7:26

Sadly almost every English Old Testament translation was translated from the Masoretic text including the King James Version. The Septuagint however was translated from the original Koine Greek and did not go through the Masoretic translation.

***

MPN NEWS

In Israel the Push to Destroy Jerusalem’s Iconic Al-Aqsa Mosque Goes Mainstream

This ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

Whitney Webb

June 24, 2019

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p>The iconic golden dome of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque, located on the Temple Mount or Haram el-Sharif, is the third holiest site in Islam and is recognized throughout the world as a symbol of the city of Jerusalem. Yet, this ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by increasingly influential extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

Some observers may have noticed the growing effort by some Israeli government and religious officials to remove the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque from the Jerusalem skyline, not only erasing the holy site in official posters, banners and educational material but also physically removing the building itself. For instance, current Knesset member of the ruling Likud Party, American-born Yehuda Glick, was also the director of the government-funded Temple Institute, which has created relics and detailed architectural plans for a temple that they hope will soon replace Al-Aqsa. Glick is also close friends with Yehuda Etzion, who was part of a failed plot in 1984 to blow up Al-Aqsa mosque and served prison time as a result.

“In the end we’ll build the temple and it will be a house of prayer for all nations,” Glick toldIsraeli newspaper Maariv in 2012. A year later, Israel’s Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel stated that “[w]e’ve built many little, little temples…but we need to build a real Temple on the Temple Mount.” Ariel stated that the new Jewish Temple must be built on the site where Al-Aqsa currently sits “as it is at the forefront of Jewish salvation.” Since then, prominent Israeli politicians have become more and more overt in their support for the end of Jordanian-Palestinian sovereignty over the mosque compound, leading many prominent Palestinians to warn in recent years of plans to destroy the mosque.

In recent years, a centuries-old effort by what was once a small group of extremists has gone increasingly mainstream in Israel, with prominent politicians, religious figures and political parties advocating for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque in order to fulfill a specific interpretation of an end-times prophecy that was once considered fringe among practitioners of Judaism.

As Miko Peled, Israeli author and human-rights activist, told MintPress, the movement to destroy Al-Aqsa and replace it with a reimagined Temple “became notable after the 1967 war,” and has since grown into “a massive colonial project that uses religious, biblical mythology and symbols to justify its actions” — a project now garnering support from both religious and secular Israelis.

While the push to destroy Al-Aqsa and replace it with a physical Third Temple has gained traction in Israel in recent years, this effort has advanced at a remarkably fast pace in just the past few weeks, owing to a confluence of factors. These factors, as this report will show, include the upcoming revelation of the so-called “Deal of the Century,” the push for a war with Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and the Trump administration’s dramatic lenience in regards to the activity of Jewish extremist groups and extremist settlements in Israel.

These factors correlate with a quickening of efforts to destroy Al-Aqsa and the very real danger the centuries-old holy site faces. While the U.S. press has occasionally mentioned the role of religious extremism in dictating the foreign policy of prominent U.S. politicians like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, it has rarely shone a light on the role of Jewish extremism in directing Israel’s foreign policy — foreign policy that, in turn, is well-known to influence American policies.

When taken together, the threats to Al-Aqsa are clearly revealed to be much greater than the loss of a physical building, though that itself would be a grave loss for the world’s Muslim community, which includes over 1.8 billion people. In addition, the site’s destruction would very likely result in a regional and perhaps even global war with clear religious dimensions.

To prevent such an outcome, it is essential to highlight the role that extremist, apocalyptic interpretations of both the Jewish and Christian faiths are playing in trends that, if left unchecked, could have truly terrifying consequences. Both of these extremist groups are heavily influenced by colonial ambitions that often supersede their religious underpinning.

In Part I of this two-part series, MintPress examines the growth of extremist movements in Israel that openly promote the destruction of Al-Aqsa, from a relatively isolated fringe movement within Zionism to mainstream prominence in Israel today; as well as how threats to the historic mosque have grown precipitously in just the past month. MintPress interviewed Israeli author and activist Miko Peled; Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta in New York; Imam and scholar of Shia Islam, Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini, of the Islamic Institute of America; and Palestinian journalist and academic Ramzy Baroud for their perspectives on these extremist groups, their growing popularity, and the increasing threats to the current status quo at Haram El-Sharif/Temple Mount.

The second part of this series will detail the influence of this extremist movement in Israeli politics as well as American politics, particularly among Christian Zionist politicians in the United States. The ways in which this movement’s goal have also influenced Israeli and U.S. policy — particularly in relation to the so-called “Deal of the Century,” President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and the push for war against Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — will also be examined.

Two centuries in the cross-hairs

Though efforts to wrest the contested holy site from Jordanian and Palestinian control have picked up dramatically in recent weeks, the Al-Aqsa mosque compound had long been targeted prior to Israel’s founding and even prior to the formation of the modern Zionist movement.

For instance, Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Kalisher — who promoted the European Jewish colonization of Palestine from a religious perspective well before Zionism became a movement — expounded on an early form of what would later be labeled “religious Zionism” and was particularly interested in the acquisition of Haram el-Sharif (i.e., the Temple Mount) as a means of fulfilling prophecy.

As noted in the essay “Proto-Zionism and its Proto-Herzl: The Philosophy and Efforts of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher” by Sam Lehman-Wilzig, Professor of Israeli Politics and Judaic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Kalisher sought to court wealthy European Jews to finance the purchase of Israel for the purpose of resettlement, particularly the Temple Mount. In an 1836 letter to Baron Amschel Rothschild, Kalisher suggested that the eldest brother of the wealthy banker family use his abundant funds to bring Jewish sovereignty to Palestine, specifically Jerusalem and the Temple Mount:

“[E]specially at a time like this, when the Land of Israel is under the dominion of the Pasha… perhaps if his most noble Excellency pays him a handsome sum and purchases for him some other country (in Africa) in exchange for the Holy Land, which is presently small in quantity but great in quality… this money would certainly not be wasted… for when the leaders of Israel are gathered from every corner of the world… and transform it into an inhabited country, the many G-d-fearing and charitable Jews will travel there to take up their residency in the Holy Land under Jewish sovereignty… and be worthy to take up their portion in the offering upon the altar. And if the master (Ibrahim Pasha) does not desire to sell the entire land, then at least he should sell Jerusalem and its environs… or at least the Temple Mount and surrounding areas.” (emphasis added)

Kalisher’s request was met with a noncommittal response from Baron Rothschild, leading Kalisher to pursue other wealthy European Jewish families, like the Montefiores, with the same goal in mind. And, though Kalisher was initially unsuccessful in winning the support of the Rothschild family, other notable members of the wealthy European banking dynasty eventually did become enthusiastic supporters of Zionism in the decades that followed.

Kalisher was also influential in another way, as he was arguably the first modern Rabbi to reject the idea of patiently waiting for God to fulfill prophecy and proposed instead that man should take concrete steps that would lead to the fulfillment of such prophecies, a belief that Kalisher described as “self help.” For Kalisher, settling European Jews in Palestine was but the first step, to be followed by other steps that would form an active as opposed to a passive approach towards Jewish Messianism. These subsequent steps included the construction of a Third Temple, to replace the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans around the year 70 C.E., and the reinitiation of ritual animal sacrifices in that Temple, which Kalisher believed could only be placed on the Temple Mount, where Al-Aqsa then sat and still sits.

Kalisher wasn’t alone in his views, as his contemporary, Rabbi Judah Alkalai, wrote the following in his book Shalom Yerushalayim:

“It is obvious that the Mashiach ben David [Messiah of the House of David] will not appear out of thin air in a fiery chariot with fiery horses, but will come if the Children of Israel bend to the task of preparing themselves for him.”

Though Kalisher wasn’t the lone voice promoting these ideas, his beliefs — aside from promoting the physical settlement of European Jews in Palestine — remained relatively fringe for decades, if not more than a century, as secular Jews were hugely influential in the Zionist movement after its official formation. However, prominent religious Zionists did influence the Zionist movement in key ways prior to Israel’s founding. One such figure was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who sought to reconcile Zionism and Orthodox Judaism as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine, a position he assumed in 1924.

Yet, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group based in New York that opposes Zionism, told MintPress that many religious Zionists have since latched onto Kalisher’s ideas, which were widely rejected during his lifetime, in order to justify neocolonial actions sought by secular Zionists. “This rabbi, at the time, other rabbis ‘roared’ against him and his beliefs weren’t accepted,” Rabbi Weiss stated, “But now, the ones who are talking about building this Third Temple….these are Zionists and they have found some rabbi whose ideas benefit them that they have been using to justify Zionist acts” that are not aligned with Judaism “and make them kosher.”

Weiss further expanded on this point, noting that the participants of the modern religious Zionism movement that seek to build a new Jewish temple where Al-Aqsa currently stands are, at their core, Zionists who have used religious imagery and specific interpretations of religious texts as cover for neo-colonial acts, such as the complete re-making of the Temple Mount.

“It’s like a wolf in a sheepskin…These people who want to incorporate the teachings of this rabbi [Rabbi Kalisher] are proudly saying that they are Jewish, but are doing things Jews are forbidden from doing,” such as ascending to and standing upon the Temple Mount, which Rabbi Weiss stated was “a breach of Jewish law,” long forbidden by that law according to a consensus among Jewish scholars and rabbis around the world that continued well beyond the formation of the Zionist movement in the 19th century.

Weiss also told MintPress:

“There are only a few sins in Judaism — which has many, many laws, that lead to a Jew being cut off from God — and to go up to the Temple Mount is one of them…This is because you need a certain level of holiness to ascend and… the process to attain that level of holiness and purity cannot be done today, because [aspects of and the items required by] the necessary purity rituals no longer exist today.”

Rabbi Weiss noted that, for this reason, the Muslim community that has historically governed the area where Al-Aqsa mosque stands never had any problems with the Jewish community in relation to the Temple Mount, as it has been known for centuries that Jews cannot ascend to the area where the mosque currently sits and instead prayed only at the Western Wall. He also stated that the prophetic idea of a Third Temple was, prior to Zionism, understood as indicating not a change in physical structures on the Temple Mount, but a metaphysical, spiritual change that would unite all of mankind to worship and serve God in unison.

Rabbi Weiss asserted that the conflict regarding Al-Aqsa mosque started only with the advent of Zionism and the associated neo-colonial ambition to fundamentally alter the status quo and structures present at the site as a means of erasing key parts (i.e., Palestinian parts) of its heritage. “This [the use of religion to justify ascending to and taking control of the Temple Mount] is a trap for conning other people into supporting them,” concluded the Rabbi.

Nonetheless, Kalisher’s impact can be seen in today’s Israel more than ever, thanks to the rise and mainstream acceptance within Israel of once-fringe elements of religious Zionism, which were deeply influenced by the ideas of rabbis like Kalisher and have served in recent decades as an incubator for some of Israel’s most radical political elements.

Meanwhile, as the debate within Judaism over the Temple Mount has changed dramatically since the 19th century, its significance in Islam has remained steadfast. According to Imam Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini, “Al-Aqsa is the third holiest mosque in Islam…it is considered to be the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven and has been mentioned in the Qoran, which glorifies that mosque and identifies it as a blessed mosque. All Muslims, whether they are Sunni or Shia, revere that mosque” — a fact that has remained unchanged for over a millennium and continues to today.

Religious Zionism gains political force

The modern rise of the religious Zionist movements that promote the destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque and its replacement with a Third Jewish Temple is most often traced back to the Six Day War of 1967. According to Miko Peled, who recently wrote a piece for MintPress Newsregarding the threats facing Al-Aqsa, “religious Zionism” as a political force became more noticeable following the 1967 war. Peled told MintPress:

“After the ‘heartland’ of Biblical Israel came under Israeli control, the religious Zionists, who before then were marginalized, saw it as their mission to settle those newly conquered lands, and to be the new pioneers, so to speak. They took on the job that the socialist Zionist ideologues had in settling Palestine and ridding it of its native Arab population in the years leading up to Israel’s establishment and up to the early 1950s. They saw the “return” of Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, or Shchem and, of course, the Old City of Jerusalem as divine intervention and now it was their turn to make their mark.

It began with a small group of Messianic fanatics who forced the government – who at that point, after 1967, was still secular Zionist – to accept their existence in the highly populated areas within the West Bank. That was how the city of Kiryat Arba [illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank] was established. The government, it is worth noting, was happy to be forced into this. From a small group that people thought were fringe lunatics to a Jewish city in the heart of Hebron region.”

Peled further noted that this model, employed by the religious extremist groups that founded illegal West Bank settlements like Kiryat Arba, “has been used successfully since then and it is now used by the groups that are promoting the new Temple in place of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.” He continued, pointing out that “whereas 20-30 years ago they were considered a fringe group, this year they expect more than 50,000 people to enter the compound to support the group and their goals. Religious Israeli youth who opt out of military service and choose national service instead may work with the [Third] Temple building organizations.”

Dr. Ramzy Baroud — journalist, academic and founder of The Palestine Chronicle — agreed with Peled’s sense that the Third Temple movement or Temple Activist movement has grown dramatically in recent years and has become increasingly mainstream in Israel. Baroud told MintPress:

“There has been a massive increase in the number of Israeli Jews who force their way into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound to pray and practice various rituals…In 2017 alone, over 25,000 Jews who visited the compound — accompanied by thousands of soldiers and police officers and provoking many clashes that resulted in the death and wounding of many Palestinians. Since 2017, the increase in Jews visiting the compound has been very significant if compared to the previous year when around 14,000 Jews made that same journey.”

Baroud also noted:

“[The Temple Activist movement] has achieved a great deal in appealing to mainstream Israeli Jewish society in recent years. At one point, it was a marginal movement, but with the rise of the far right in Israel, their ideas and ideologies and religious aspirations have also become part of the Israeli mainstream.”

As a result, Baroud asserted:

[There is] an increasing degree of enthusiasm among Israeli Jews that is definitely not happening at the margins [of society], but is very much a part of the mainstream, more so than at any time in the past, to take over the Al-Aqsa mosque, demolish the mosque in order to rebuild the so-called Third Temple.”

However, Rabbi Weiss disagreed with Peled and Baroud that this faction presents a real threat to the mosque, given that the mosque’s destruction is widely rejected by Diaspora Jewry (i.e., Jews living outside of Israel) and that destroying it would not only cause conflicts with the global Muslim community but also numerous Jewish communities outside of Israel.

As Rabbi Weiss told MintPress:

Some of the largest and most religious [i.e. ultra-orthodox] Jewish communities outside of Israel, like the second largest community of religious [ultra-orthodox] Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn [in New York], and also in Israel … are opposed to this concept of taking over the Temple Mount and other related ideas.”

Weiss argued that many of these religious Zionists in Israel that are pushing for a new Temple “do not follow Jewish law to the letter and don’t come from the very religious communities, including the settlers…They don’t go to expressly religious schools, they go to Zionist schools. Their whole view is built on Zionism and [secondarily] incorporates the religion,” as opposed to the reverse. As a result, the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque, in Weiss’ view, could greatly alienate the state of Israel from these more religious and ultra-orthodox communities.

In addition, Rabbi Weiss felt that many Jewish and secular Israelis would also reject such a move because it would create even more conflicts, which many Israelis do not want. He described the Temple Activists as “a vocal minority” that represented a “fringe” among adherents to Judaism and a group within Zionism that has tried to use the Temple Mount “in order to be able to excuse their occupation and to try to portray this [the occupation of Palestine] as a religious conflict,” with the conflict surrounding the Temple Mount being an extension of that.

Weiss believed that the push to take over the Temple Mount was a “scare tactic” aimed at securing the indefinite nature of the occupation, and noted that many Israelis did not want a spike in or renewal of conflict that would inevitably result if the mosque were to be destroyed. He also added that he did not think there was a “real threat” of the mosque being targeted because international rabbinical authorities have stood fast in their opposition to the project promoted by the Temple Activists.

“Tomorrow might be too late”

It is hardly a coincidence that the growth of Temple Activism and associated movements like “neo-Zionism” have paralleled the growth in threats to the Al-Aqsa mosque itself. Many of these threats can be understood through the doctrine developed by Rabbi Kalisher and others in the mid-19th century — the idea that “active” steps must be taken to bring about the reconstruction of a Jewish Temple at Haram El-Sharif in order to bring about the Messianic Age.

Indeed, during the 1967 war, General Shlomo Goren, the chief rabbi of the IDF, had told Chief of Central Command Uzi Narkiss that, shortly after Israel’s conquest of Jerusalem’s Old City, the moment had come to blow up the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. “Do this and you will go down in history,” Goren told Narkiss. According to Tom Segev’s book 1967, Goren felt that the site’s destruction could only be done under the cover of war: “Tomorrow might be too late.”

Goren was among the first Israelis to arrive at the then-recently conquered Old City in Jerusalem and was joined at the newly “liberated” Al-Aqsa compound by a young Yisrael Ariel, who now is a major leader in the Temple Activist movement and head of the Temple Institute, which is dedicated to constructing a Third Temple where Al-Asqa mosque currently stands.

Narkiss rejected Goren’s request, but did approve the razing of Jerusalem’s Moroccan quarter. According to Mondoweiss, the destruction of the nearly seven centuries old Jerusalem neighborhood was done for the “holy purpose” of making the Western Wall more accessible to Jewish Israelis. Some 135 homes were flattened, along with several mosques, and over 700 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed as part of that operation.

Following the occupation of East Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa has come under increasing threat, just as extremist movements who seek to destroy the site have grown. In 1969, a Christian extremist from Australia, Daniel Rohan, set fire to the mosque. Rohan had been studying in Israel and, prior to committing arson, had told American theology student Arthur Jones, who was studying with Rohan, that he had become convinced that a new temple had to be built where Al-Aqsa stood.

Then, in 1984, a group of messianic extremists known as the Jewish Underground was arrested for plotting to use explosives to destroy Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock. Ehud Yatom, who was a security official and commander of the operation that foiled the plot, told Israel’s Channel 2 in 2004 that the planned destruction of the site would have been “horrible, terrible,” adding that it could provoke “the entire Muslim world [into a war] against the state of Israel and against the Western world, a war of religions.”

One of those arrested in 1984 in connection with the bomb plot, former Jewish Underground member Yehuda Etzion, subsequently wrote from prison that his group’s mistake was not in targeting the historic mosque, which he called an “abomination,” but in acting before Israeli society would accept such an act. “The generation was not ready,” Etzion wrote, adding that those sympathetic to the Jewish Underground movement “must build a new force that grows very slowly, moving its educational and social activity into a new leadership.”

“Of course I cannot predict whether the Dome of the Rock will be removed from the Mount while the new body is developing or after it actually leads the people,” Etzion stated, “but the clear fact is that the Mount will be purified [from Islamic shrines] with certainty…”

Upon his release from prison, Etzion founded the Chai Vekayam (Alive and Existing) movement, a group that Al Jazeera’s Mersiha Gadzo described as aimed at “shaping public opinion as a prerequisite for building a Third Temple in the religious complex in Jerusalem’s Old City where Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located.” Gadzo also notes that “according to messianic belief, building the Third Temple at the Al Aqsa compound — where the First and Second Temples stood some 2,000 years ago — would usher the coming of the Messiah.”

Six years later, another group called the Temple Mount Faithful, which is dedicated to building the Third Temple, provoked what became known as the Al-Aqsa massacre in 1990 after its members attempted to place a cornerstone for the Third Temple on the Temple Mount / Haram El-Sharif, leading to riots that saw Israeli police shoot and kill over 20 Palestinians and wound an estimated 150 more.

This was followed by the riots in 1996 after Israel opened up a series of tunnels that had been dug under Al-Aqsa mosque that many Palestinians worried would be used to damage or destroy the mosque. Those concerns may have been well-founded, given the involvement of then- and current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Third Temple activist groups in creating the tunnels and in subsequent excavations near the holy site, which were and continue to be officially described as “archaeological” in nature. During the 1996 incident, 80 Palestinians and 14 Israeli police officers were killed.

Some Israeli archaeologists have argued that these tunnels have not been built for archaeological or scientific purposes and are highly unlikely to result in any new discoveries. One such Israeli archaeologist, Yoram Tseverir, told Middle East Monitor in 2014 that “the claims that these excavations aim at finding scientific information are marginal” and called the still-ongoing government-sponsored excavations under Al-Aqsa “wrong.” When those “archaeological” excavations at Al-Aqsa resulted in damage to the Western Wall near Al-Aqsa last year, a chorus of prominent Palestinians, including the spokesman for the Fatah Party, claimed that Israel’s government had devised a plan to destroy the mosque.

Since 2000, Al-Aqsa mosque has been the site of incidents that have resulted in new state crackdowns by Israel against Palestinians both within and well outside of Jerusalem. Indeed, the Second Intifada was largely provoked by the visit of the then-Likud candidate for prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who entered Al-Aqsa mosque under heavy guard. Then-spokesman for Likud, Ofir Akounis, was later quoted by CNN as saying that the reason for Sharon’s visit was “to show that under a Likud government it [the Temple Mount] will remain under Israeli sovereignty.”

That single visit by Sharon led to five years of heightened tensions, more than three thousand dead Palestinians and an estimated thousand dead Israelis, as well as a massive and still continuing crackdown on Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud told MintPress that Sharon’s provocation in particular, and subsequent provocations, are often planned and used by Israeli politicians in order to justify crackdowns and restrictions on Palestinians. He argued:

“[Some powerful Israeli politicians] use these regular provocations at Al Aqsa to create the kind of tensions that increase violence in the West Bank and to [then] carry out whatever policies they have in mind. They know exaclty how to provoke Palestinians and there is no other issue that is as sensitive and unifying in the Palestinian psyche as Al-Aqsa mosque.

Not only do we need to be aware of the fact that [provocations at] Al-Aqsa mosque are being used to implement archaic, destructive plans [i.e., destruction of Al-Aqsa and construction of a Third Temple] by certain elements that are now very much at the core of Israeli politics, but also the fact that this type of provocation is also used to implement broader policies pertaining to Palestinians elsewhere.”

Drums beating loud

While there have long been efforts to destroy the historic Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, recent weeks have seen a disturbing and dramatic uptick in incidents that suggest that the influential groups in Israel that have long pushed for the mosque’ s destruction may soon get their way. This reflects what Ramzy Baroud described to MintPress as how support for the construction of the Third Temple where Al-Aqsa currently sits is now “greater than at any time in the past” within Israeli society.

Earlier this month on June 2, a religious adviser to the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Al-Habbash, took to social media to warn of an “Israeli plot against the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” adding that “If the Muslims don’t act now [to save the site]… the entire world will pay dearly.”

Al-Habbash’s statement was likely influenced by a disturbing event that occurred that same day at the revered compound when Israeli police provided cover for extremist Israeli settlers who illegally entered the compound during the final days of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Israeli police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse Palestinian worshippers who had gathered at the mosque during one of Islam’s most important holidays while allowing over a thousand Israeli Jews to enter the compound. Forty-five Palestinians were wounded and several were arrested.

Though such provocative visits by Jewish Israelis to Al-Aqsa have occurred with increasing frequency in recent years, this event was different because it up-ended a long-standing agreement between Jordan’s government, which manages the site, and Israel that no such visits take place during important Islamic holidays. As a consequence, Jordan accused Israel’s government of “flagrant violations” of that agreement by allowing visits from religious nationalists, which Jordan described as “provocative intrusions by extremists.”

Less than a week after the incident, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister, Miri Regev, a member of the Netanyahu-led Likud Party, called for more settler extremists to storm the compound, stating: “We should do everything to keep ascending to the Temple Mount … And hopefully, soon we will pray in the Temple Mount, our sacred place.” In addition, Regev also thanked Israel’s Interior Security Minister, Gilad Erdan, and Jerusalem’s police chief for guarding the settler extremists who had entered the compound.

In 2013, then-member of the Likud Party Moshe Feiglin told the Knesset that allowing Jewish Israelis to enter the compound is “not about prayer.” “Arabs don’t mind that Jews pray to God. Why should they care? We all believe in God,” Feiglin — who now heads the Zehut, or Identity, Party — stated, adding, “The struggle is about sovereignty. That’s the true story here. The story is about one thing only: sovereignty.”

In other words, Likud and its ideological allies view granting Jewish Israelis entrance to “pray” at the site of the mosque as a strategy aimed at reducing Palestinian-Jordanian control over the site. Feiglin’s past comments give credibility to Rabbi Weiss’ claim, referenced earlier on in this report, that the religious underpinnings and religious appeals of the Temple Activists are secondary to the settler-colonial (i.e., Zionist) aspect of the movement, which seeks to remove Palestinian and Muslim heritage from the Temple Mount as part of the ongoing Zionist project.

Feiglin, earlier this year in April, called for the immediate construction of the Third Temple, telling a Tel Aviv conference, “I don’t want to build a [Third] Temple in one or two years, I want to build it now.” The Times of Israel, reporting on Feiglin’s comments, noted that the Israeli politician is “enjoying growing popularity.”

Earlier this month, and not long after Miri Regev’s controversial comments, an event attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Leon, used a banner that depicted the Jerusalem skyline with the Dome of the Rock noticeably absent. Though some may write off such creative photo editing as a fluke, it is but the latest in a series of similar incidents where official events or materials have edited out the iconic building and, in some cases, have replaced it with a reconstructed Jewish temple.

The day before that event, Israeli police had arrested three members of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound’s Reconstruction Committee, which is overseen by the government of Jordan. Those arrested included the committee’s head and its deputy head, and the three men were arrested while performing minor restoration work in an Al-Aqsa courtyard. The Jordan-run authority condemned the arrests, for which no official reason was given, and called the move by Israeli police “an intervention in their [the men’s] reconstruction work.” According to Palestinian news agency Safa, Israeli police have also prevented the entry of tools necessary for restoration work to the site and have restricted members of the authority from performing critical maintenance work.

In addition, another important figure at Al-Aqsa, Hanadi Al-Halawani, who teaches at the mosque school and has long watched over the site to prevent its occupation by Israeli forces, was arrested late last month.

Arrests of other key Al-Aqsa personnel have continued in recent days, such as the arrest of seven Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, including guards of the mosque, and their subsequent ban from entering the site. The Palestinians were arrested at their homes last Sunday night in early morning raids and the official reason for their arrest remains unclear. So many arrests in such a short period have raised concerns that, should the spate of arrests of important Al-Aqsa personnel continue, future incidents at the site, such as the mysterious firethat broke out last April at Al-Aqsa while France’s Notre Dame was also ablaze, may not be handled as effectively owing to staff shortages.

Soon after those arrests, 60 members of a settler extremist group entered the al-Aqsa compound under heavy guard from Israeli police. Safa news agency reported that these settlers have recently been accompanied by Israeli intelligence officials in their incursions at the site.

All of these recent provocations and arrests in connection with the mosque come soon after the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, publicly stated in late March that he had recently come under great pressure to relinquish Jordan’s custodianship of the mosque and the contested holy site upon which it is built. Abdullah II vowed to continue custodianship over Christian and Muslim sites in Jerusalem, including Al-Aqsa, and declined to say who was pressuring him over the site. However, his comments about this pressure to cede control over the mosque came just days after he had visited the U.S. and met with American Vice President Mike Pence, a Christian Zionist who believes that a Jewish Temple must replace Al-Aqsa to fulfill an end times prophecy.

In May, an Israeli government-linked research institute, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, wrote that Abdullah II had nearly been toppled in mid-April, just weeks after publicly discussing external pressure to relinquish control over Al-Aqsa. The report stated that Abdullah II had been a target of a “plot undermining his rule,” which led him to replace several senior members of his government. That report further claimed that the plot had been aimed at removing obstacles to the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century,” which is supported by Israel’s government.

Last year, some Israeli politicians sought to push for a transfer of the site’s custodianship to Saudi Arabia, sparking concern that this could be connected to plans by some Third Temple activists to remove Al-Aqsa from Jerusalem and transfer it piece-by-piece to the Saudi city of Mecca. On Thursday, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published an article asserting that “tectonic shifts” were taking place in relation to who controls Al-Aqsa, with a Saudi-funded political group making dramatic inroads that could soon alter which country controls the historic mosque compound.

Sayyed Hassan Al-Qazwini told MintPress that, in his view, the current custodianship involving Jordan’s government is not ideal, as control over the Al-Aqsa mosque “should in the hands of its people, [and] Al-Aqsa mosque belongs Palestine;” if not, at the very least, a committee of Muslim majority nations should be formed to govern the holy site because of its importance. As for Saudi Arabia potentially receiving control over the site, Al-Qazwini told MintPress that “the Saudis are not qualified as they are not even capable of running the holy sites in Saudi Arabia itself. Every year, there has been a tragedy and many pilgrims have died during hajj time [annual Islamic pilgrimage].”

Once fringe, now approaching consensus

The threat to Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock compound, the third holiest site in Islam and of key importance to three major world religions, is the result of the dramatic growth of what was once a fringe movement of extremists. After the Six Day War, these fringe elements have fought to become more mainstream within Israel and have sought to gain international support for their religious-colonialist vision, particularly in the United States. As this article has shown, the threats to Al-Aqsa have grown significantly in the past decades, spiking in just the past few weeks.

As former Jewish Underground member Yehuda Etzion had called for decades ago, an educational and social movement aimed at gaining influence with Israeli government leadership has been hugely successful in its goal of engineering consent for a Third Temple among many religious and secular Israelis. So successful has this movement been that numerous powerful and influential Israeli politicians, particularly since the 1990s, have not only openly promoted these beliefs, and the destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, but have also diverted significant amounts of government funding to organizations dedicated to replacing the historic mosque with a new temple.

As the second and final installment of this series will show, this movement has gained powerful allies, not just in Israel’s government, but among many evangelical Christians in the United States, including top figures in the Trump administration who also feel that the destruction of Al-Aqsa and the reconstruction of a Jewish Temple are prerequisites for the fulfillment of prophecy, albeit a different one. Furthermore, given the influence of such movements on the Israeli and U.S. governments, these beliefs of active Messianism are also informing key policies of these same governments and, in doing so, are pushing the world towards a dangerous war.

Feature photo | Israeli police stand next to the Dome of the Rock mosque at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, July 27, 2017. Mahmoud Illean | AP

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

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THE JERUSALEM POST

DECIPHERED DEAD SEA SCROLLS POSE QUESTIONS FOR HISTORIANS

By Alex Winston June 19, 2019

Two of the few remaining undechipered segments of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been deciphered, more than sixty years after they were first discovered.
Deciphered by Prof. Ariel and Faina Feldman of the Texas Christian University, the segments written in semi-cursive script, folded and were encased in small leather remnants, like many examples of tefillin [phylacteries] found in the desert from the Second Temple period.

However, unlike tefillin, which contain parchments quoting the Book of Exodus or Deuteronomy, the previously undechipered writing was found found to be prayers and the names of angels, components which are consistent with Jewish amulets, which whilst using holy words, did not directly quote from the Bible.
This has opened up the possibility to modern historians that written amulets were potentially in use in Judaism during the Second Temple era, something previously not recognized.
The scrolls, a collection of manuscripts containing biblical and extra-biblical writings were first found in 1947 by local Bedouin in the area of Qumran, near the Dead Sea
The research was published in two journals: “4Q147: An Amulet?” in the March 2019 issue of Dead Sea Discoveriesand “4Q148 (4QPhylactère T): Another Amulet from Qumran?” in the May 2019 issue of The Journal for the Study of Judaism.

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BREAKINGISRAELNEWS

Gog and Magog Heating Up? Russia clarifies it Will Side with Iran Against the US and Israel

By David Sidman June 26, 2019

“Turn your face toward Gog of the land of Magog” Ezekiel 38:1 (The Israel Bible™)

US Troops (Image by Shutterstock)

Russia’s chief national security adviser, Nikolai Patrushev, defended Iran ‘s claims during a trilateral meeting with his Israeli and American counterparts in Jerusalem on Tuesday. He clarified his support for Tehran’s accusations against the US and backs their current military presence in Syria, which Israel considers to be a threat to its national security.

The Times of Israel reports that during a press conference held in the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem yesterday, Patrushev rejected the opinion held by both the US and Israel that Iran is “the main threat to regional security”. He said that Israel’s airstrikes in Syria that target Iranian forces and its proxies were “undesirable.”

Regarding the downing of a US surveillance drone by Iran last week, Patrushev stated that the Russian Defense Ministry has sided with Iran’s claim that the aircraft entered Iranian airspace. The US position contradicts this claim and says that the drone was flying in international airspace when the event took place.

“We have not seen any proof otherwise,” Patrushev stated. The Russian official also praised Iran’s ongoing presence in Syria — a situation that Israel considers to be an unacceptable threat. Patrushev stated that Iran was “contributing a lot to fighting terrorists on Syrian soil and stabilizing the situation there.”

Additionally, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry confirmed with Egypt Today on Monday that Russia and Egypt share a similar position regarding the Palestinian cause which is predicated on a two-state solution. This includes a “permanent and just solution to the Palestinian cause, and to establish a Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

(Jewish interpretation of the battle of Gog and Magog is generally different then the Christian interpretation. However, this article does continue to show the signs of the times. Ed)

HAL Turner Radio Show

Israel Life Span will be only a "Half-Hour" if U.S. Attacks Iran

July 1, 2019

“If the U.S. attacks us, only half an hour will remain of Israel’s lifespan,” Mojtaba Zolnour, the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy commission said on Monday.

The statement came on the very day that Iran acknowledged it has violated the Joint Comprehensive Agreement (Iran Nuclear Deal) and is now exceeding the amount of Enriched Uranium in its possession beyond the agreed-upon quantity of 300 kilograms.

SPUTNIK

Saudi Arabia Calls Palestinian Refugees' Right to Return to Homeland Non-Negotiable

July 3, 2019

DOHA (Sputnik) - The Saudi government insists that Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homeland on disputed Israeli territory is beyond discussion while the United States ignores the issue in a recently proposed "deal of the century" for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

"The government confirms the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homeland, considering it fixed and established as well as not negotiable", the ministry tweeted, citing Cabinet protocol.

The government also confirmed that Saudi Arabia was among major states that continue to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees.

Earlier in the day, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement that the government of Saudi Arabia has donated $2 million to the agency.

On 25 June, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner presented a US plan for an Israeli-Palestinian conflict settlement. The key proposal was to invest money in foreign territories the Palestinians are currently taking refuge in so that they might never seek to return to their homeland in seized Israeli territory. The plan did not include any direct proposal on how a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians could be relaunched.

For decades, Palestinians have sought recognition of their independent state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli government has refused to recognize Palestine Autonomy as an independent political and diplomatic entity, and continues to build illegal settlements in occupied areas despite objections from the United Nations.

According to the UNRWA, Palestinian refugees are defined as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict".

Nowadays, there are about 5 million Palestinian refugees in the world, while approximately one-third of them live in 58 recognized Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Syrian Arab Republic.

FORBES

Open Letter To Mark Zuckerberg

Steve Forbes Forbes Staff

“With all thy getting, get understanding."

June 25, 2019

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:

Your company made big headlines when it announced it would be launching a cryptocurrency called the Libra in 2020. Not surprisingly, given the nature of the times, the project has been greeted with intense criticism and skepticism. Don’t lose heart. In one sense, the idea of a company creating its own kind of money is an old one. The airlines’ frequent-flier miles are really a form of money that customers can earn and use to buy trips and various other things. Credit card companies, hotels and numerous retailers have all sorts of loyalty programs in which people earn points that will let them buy all manner of goodies.

But if you play your cards right with the Libra, you could be to money and finance what Henry Ford was to automobiles. Your new currency could take its place alongside the inventions of coins and paper money many centuries ago. It could replace the U.S. dollar as the global currency.

In one crucial area you’re already light years ahead of virtually all other cryptocurrencies: You realize the fundamental importance of a currency that’s stable in value. Money measures value the way a scale measures weight or a clock measures time. Most cryptos–whose values fluctuate violently from one moment to the next–are great as speculative vehicles, but they’re useless as real money. No one in his right mind would write a contract longer than 24 hours in bitcoin. With cryptocurrencies, it’s steak one day and dog food the next. But if you can invent a truly stable cryptocurrency that can actually be used for day-to-day transactions and for longer-term contracts and investment vehicles, you’ll be a winner.

Here are crucial tips to turn the Libra into one of history’s truly seminal creations:

Make it as good as gold. Backing your new money—as you plan to do—with a basket of currencies won’t cut it. In today’s monetary system the values of currencies jump up and down, so you won’t get the stability you need.

Countries that became global powerhouses–Holland, followed by Britain (Isaac Newton, as director of the Royal Mint, fixed the pound to gold at a ratio that held for more than two centuries) and then the U.S. (thanks to Alexander Hamilton)—all had their currencies linked to gold.

For a variety of reasons gold holds its intrinsic value better than anything else. It’s like a measuring rod. It no more restricts the money supply than the 12 inches in a foot restricts the size of a building you might wish to construct. All it means is that the Libra will have what no other currency has today: a fixed value. And that fixture will gradually make it the most desirable medium of exchange around the globe. People hunger for trustworthy money.

Your consultants, like most economists today, will be vociferously opposed to the yellow metal, burdened as they are by ignorance and countless myths and superstitions. This widely shared skepticism will actually be an advantage, as it will keep away well-capitalized imitators.

To get an accurate assessment of how a gold standard has worked before, read any book by historian/economist Nathan Lewis. You might also look at a book that I co-authored, Money, or the documentary In Money We Trust?that I recently helped produce for public television.

The Libra will be an unbelievably potent tool for prosperity by encouraging long-term investing. Without putting capital to work productively we stagnate. This is why you should ignore political cries to hold off on moving the Libra forward. If every great breakthrough depended on getting political sign-offs, horses would still be our principal means of transportation. You want the Libra to achieve a critical mass of users as quickly as possible—as Uber and Lyft did with their riders—which will prevent politicians from deep-sixing your invention.

And, by the way, you might consider changing the Libra’s name.The “Libra” was a measure of weight from the Roman Empire, and we know where that ended up. Don’t be bashful; call it the “Mark.” Germany ditched its mark—which it had been using since it created it after WWII—for the euro 20 years ago, so the name is up for grabs.

A gold-backed Mark would be a transformative move in the history of money. It would blow bitcoin out of the water and would generate an enthusiastic “Like” from billions of businesses and people, now and forever.

Sincerely,

Steve Forbes

USAWatchdog

Steve Quayle – The Big Lie – Aliens Are Saviors and Not Jesus

By Greg Hunter On June 30, 2019

Filmmaker, alien researcher and renowned radio host Steve Quayle says this is the year the truth is going to come out about aliens visiting earth. Quayle says, “The information is being released now by the same government that used to cover up every single UFO sighting, even when they started with ‘Project Blue Book.’ It wasn’t to answer the alien question, it was to control all the information of all the different sightings. The number one goal of the world control, I call them the fallen angel puppet masters, is to spin everything in history to their advantage. They want to destroy everything that is good and what God created. Every barrier, natural barrier, supernatural barrier and all of the barriers are being broken.”

Are we going to have the alien question answered this year? Quayle says, “Yes, and I think you are seeing it. . . . I believe before 2019 is up, somebody and I don’t know who . . . but there are two to three nations that are getting ready to release all of the artifacts and all of the film footage. They have been paid huge money to keep it under wraps. So, as Trump changes foreign policy and their money stops, this stuff is going to start to flow. I think 2019 is going to be the year of unparalleled revelation.”

Quayle says dark powers are wanting humanity to believe a huge lie–that aliens created us. Quayle says, “They say the aliens created us. Ancient alien theory is that the aliens, through a process called panspermia basically dumped DNA in the primordial goo and out popped man and me and you. I categorically reject that. When people tell me we were created by aliens and Jesus was alien, I say I’ve got news for you. You say god was an alien, then why all of the recorded ancient records always talking about the aliens with male and female sexual reproduction? . . . The big lie is the ancient aliens created us. The reason why they want us to believe the aliens created us is because it takes away from the thought of hell, it takes away from the need for salvation and it absolutely minimalizes the most important being in the universe, and that is Jesus. It teaches in the Bible that through Jesus and by Jesus all things exist. It is really hard for people to accept that. Now, the fallen angels are getting people to embrace Satan. . . . What you are seeing is a post-Christian culture in America. The enemy, the devil, is running wild with every form of perversion, every form of genetic mutation and every form of doing away with mankind. Look at sex robots. They are designed to do one thing and that is to displace human women.”

In closing, Quayle says, “I want to give a warning. . . . We are seeing the revelation that the aliens are finally real. . . . This is the perfect storm, and they are going to bring the aliens on as a savior. We rejected Jesus Christ as Savior, but somehow ‘digital nine’ from the planet Neptune comes and says we created you. If they created us, who created them? . . . This is a supernatural evil plan. The devil is going to use the aliens, and he’s already preparing people to accept the fact that we can’t save ourselves, and this planet is out of control and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and here they come. . . .The great deception is this: the God of the Bible isn’t the one who created us. That’s a lie. Jesus isn’t the Savior of the world and that’s the lie.”

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GATESTONE INSTITUTE

Christians in Africa: "You have three days to go or you will be killed!"

by Giulio Meotti

June 30, 2019

• "Christianity originated in the Middle East. Thus, the displacement or evacuation of Christians from the Middle East is very dangerous for the safety of the region... also in the Mediterranean Sea region. Europe is affected by this." — Egyptian Coptic Pope Tawadros II, in Germany, where he was inaugurating a new Coptic church for his exiled community. Deutsche Welle, May 14, 2019.

• Regrettably, the tragedy of these Christian massacres is directly proportional to the neglect with which they are reported in the West.

• "'Islamophobia' looms large; talk of 'Christophobia' is almost nonexistent". — Ross Douthat, "Are Christians Privileged or Persecuted?", The New York Times, April 23, 2019.

• Algeria -- the country of origin of some of the Christian fathers such as Augustine of Hippo -- has become a country... where officially there are "no native Christians". How many other countries will meet the same fate? And will the West ever come to the help of their Christian brethren?

Christian families recently fled the city of Diffa, in Niger, after Boko Haram delivered the message: "You have three days to go or you will be killed!" Pictured: The gate of a school in Diffa. (Image source: Roland Hunziker/Wikimedia Commons)

Persecution of Christians in the Middle East is now close to "genocide", a UK-commissioned report just revealed. The same threat has also become critical for Christian communities in Africa.

Some say it began in Algeria in the 1990s, when 19 monks, bishops, nuns and other Catholics were killed during the civil war. Since then, in Nigeria, Christian faithful have been massacred in their churches; in Kenya, Christians have been killed in universities; in Libya, Christians have been beheaded on beaches; in Yemen, nuns have been assassinated and in Egypt, massive anti-Christian violence is prompting an exodus. It is the new African archipelago of persecution.

Distressingly, these Christians have been finding themselves in the blind spot of the West: they are "too Christian" to get the Left's attention, but too far away for the Right. Africa's Christians are orphans. They have no "allies", John O'Sullivan writes.

Christian families recently fled the city of Diffa, in Niger, after Boko Haram delivered the message: "You have three days to go or you will be killed!". "There is no Christian anymore in this town", someone reported to the non-governmental organization, the Barnabas Fund. The town, Arbinda, is in Burkina Faso. Numbers are telling: 82 pastors, 1,145 Christians and 151 households have fled from violence in the Muslim-majority nation. Just in the last few weeks, several of the Christian faithful and clergy have been murdered. Jihadists killed six Christians in a Catholic church in the town of Dablo. A pastor was murdered in an attack in Silgadji, Catholic parades have been targeted.

Jihadists apparently want to "cleanse" these areas of Christians -- and they are succeeding. "There is an atmosphere of panic in the town," the mayor of Dablo, Ousmane Zongo, said. "People are holed up in their homes, nothing is going on. The shops and stores are closed. It's practically a ghost town".

In Nigeria, attacks on Christians never stop. The country has become a "war zone for Christians".

"The attacks on Christians are growing more flagrant and more aggressive," Father John Bakeni from the Maiduguri Diocese, northern Nigeria, said. "We consider each day we live in safety a blessing because we do not know what will happen the next day".

"We Christians are at risk of extinction and an attempt is being made to Islamize the whole country because controlling Nigeria means expelling Christians from all of West Africa", said Father Joseph Fidelis Bature, a Catholic priest in the Nigerian diocese of Maiduguri, in the Italian monthly Tempi.

Unfortunately, we Westerners have a short memory. Al Qaeda's first attacks took place in Africa: the bombings against US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Africa matters for the West. That is why we should take this monstrous new anti-Christian persecution more seriously. "Christianity originated in the Middle East", the Egyptian Coptic Pope Tawadros II said in Germany, where he was inaugurating a new Coptic church in May for his exiled community. "Thus, the displacement or evacuation of Christians from the Middle East is very dangerous for the safety of the region, not only in the Middle East but also in the Mediterranean Sea region. Europe is affected by this, and the Arab countries as well". The West should take much more seriously these appeals from the Eastern Christian leaders.

With a secularized Europe and a Middle East close to becoming emptied of Christians, those jihadists who are obsessed with eradicating Christianity understand that their current ideological battlefield is in Africa. "By 2025, 50 percent of the (world's) Christian population will be in Africa and Latin America", wrote the scholar Philip Jenkins. The share of the world's Christians in sub-Saharan Africa is expected grow from 24% in 2010 to 38% by 2050. That is why jihadists there are pursuing a horrific project of religious cleansing.

"Christianity has literally 'gone south', exploding demographically in the developing world and augmenting ongoing sociopolitical turmoil in places such as West Africa", the Pew Forum reports. Radical Islam wants to stop this demographic movement, which Professor Philip Jenkins called "the largest religious change of any kind that has ever occurred".

According to another report, in one century the number of Muslims living in sub-Saharan Africa has increased more than 20-fold, rising from 11 million in 1900 to 234 million in 2010. At the same time, the number of Christians has grown 70-fold, rising from 7 million to 470 million. Sub-Saharan Africa now is home to 21% of all the Christians in the world and 15% of the world's Muslims. "Islamic extremism has two global centers of gravity, one in the Arab Middle East, but the other is in sub-Saharan Africa", researcher Ron Boyd-MacMillan noted in a report for Open Doors.

Every year, Open Doors lists the world's 50 worst persecutors of Christians. The list include 14 African countries, called home to "extreme" or "very high" levels of persecution: Algeria, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, and Tunisia. Mali, for instance, went from no listing to seventh place in just two years. In Kenya last year, Islamists forced passengers of a bus to present their identification cards. Then they separated Muslims and killed the two Christians.

Regrettably, the tragedy of these massacres of Christians is directly proportional to the neglect with which they are reported in the West. "One of the basic facts of contemporary religious history is that Christians around the world are persecuted on an extraordinary scale", Ross Douthat recently wrote in The New York Times.

"Yet as an era-defining reality rather than an episodic phenomenon this reality is barely visible in the Western media, and rarely called by name and addressed head-on by Western governments and humanitarian institutions. ('Islamophobia' looms large; talk of 'Christophobia' is almost nonexistent.)"

Jihadists know a secret: persecution works. Algeria -- the country of origin of some of the Christian fathers such as Augustine of Hippo -- has become a country that is 99.9% Muslim and where officially there are "no native Christians". How many other countries will meet the same fate? And will the West ever come to the help of their Christian brethren?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

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PUTPIT&PEN

California Legislature Blames Religious People for LGBTQ Suicides

BY NEWS DIVISION · PUBLISHED June 28, 2019

Homosexuals are up to five times as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers. ‘Transgender’ teens have even higher rates of suicide. It is, for all intents and purposes, an epidemic among the LGBTQXYZ. The California Legislature says that’s the fault of religious people.

A resolution called ACR-99 chastizes the religious community for the plague of suicides.

WHEREAS, The stigma associated with being LGBT often created by groups in society, including therapists and religious groups, has caused disproportionately high rates of suicide, attempted suicide, depression, rejection, and isolation amongst LGBT and questioning individuals…

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ANCIENT ORIGINS

Satanic Plaque and Altar Unearthed in The Queen’s Holyrood Park in Scotland

John Black

June 22, 2019
The satanic pentagram and altar were found in the park surrounding Holyrood Palace (pictured). Credit: samott / Adobe Stock

In a secluded area of The Queen’s Holyrood Park in Edinburgh, Scotland, archaeologists have unearthed two mysterious objects, including a metal plaque depicting an upside-down pentagram with a horned beast in the center – most likely the demonic entity Baphomet – and an altar with undisclosed “display objects” around the plinth. While news outlets are calling the objects pagan, the symbology appears more associated with satanism and devil worship.

Holyrood, The Seat of Scottish Royals

The Scotsman announced that the satanic objects were found on Whinny Hill above St Margaret’s Loch in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh. Holyrood Park, which is also known as The Queen’s Park, is a royal park that remains part of Holyrood Palace, The Queen’s official residence in Scotland.

Holyrood Park was established by King David I of Scotland in 1128 AD as the royal hunting grounds for Holyrood Abbey. Holyrood Palace, also know as the Royal Palace of Holyroodhouse, started as a lodging within the Abbey but was eventually expanded into a substantial palace which served as the principal residence of the Kings and Queens of Scots since the 16 th century.

So just what are a couple of satanic objects doing in The Queen’s Park?

Mysterious Find in Queen’s Park

Edinburgh Evening News reports that the metal plaque and altar were found embedded in the ground within a section of turf cut into a triangle shape. A concrete altar was found buried beneath the topsoil and apparently was surrounded by “display objects”, though what these objects were have not been specified.

A number of rune stones were found embedded in the concrete triangle around the metal plaque, along with the depiction of a number of different figures.

The objects were found in May last year and Historic Environment Scotland, which manages the park, brought in archaeologists to investigate the site. But the mystery deepens. The Scotland reports:

“But, even more curiously, according to a new report compiled by Musselburgh-based firm CFA Archaeology and seen by The Scotsman, both had been removed “by persons unknown” at some point before they investigated the site in April this year, leaving just the concrete plinth and holes in the turf behind.”

It appears that no one knows where the satanic objects are now, nor what the archaeologists concluded from their investigations.

Pagan or Satanic

The Scotsman sought the opinion of the president of the UK Pagan Council, Mark Black, who has called the objects ‘pagan’, referring primarily to the pentagram – a five-pointed star – which has long been associated with paganism.

The pentagram symbol was used in ancient Greece and Babylonia, with the most ancient representation found at Ur, a powerful city in Mesopotamia dating back around 5,500 years. But its use was particularly strong among the Celtic Pagans and Druids, who saw the five points as representing five elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit, each bound within the circle of life, death, and rebirth.

It is possible that the central figure seen in the object found in Holywood is Cernunnos, the "horned god" of Celtic polytheism. Cernunnos was a Celtic god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld, and was often depicted wearing antlers as horns.

However, three main factors suggest that the metal pentagram plaque is not pagan. The first is that pagan objects used natural materials and would not have been embedded in concrete. The second is that all evidence suggests the plaque and altar are not ancient. They were found very close to the surface, in top soil, and the plaque in particular looks to be a modern creation. Finally, the orientation of the star is important. When the pentagram is positioned with the single point upwards, it represents the spirit presiding over the four elements of matter. However, when the pentagram is reversed with the two points projecting upwards, like the one found in The Queen’s Holyrood Park, it becomes a symbol of evil, representing the triumph of matter over spirit. The two points of an inverted pentagram also represent horns, like those of the demonBaphomet.

The 19th-century French occultist Eliphas Levi wrote that the pentacle had dark symbolism when inverted:

"A reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, is a symbol of evil and attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things and demonstrates the triumph of matter over spirit. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns, a sign execrated by initiates."

Satanists today use an inverted pentagram inside a circle as their symbol with the head of Baphomet in the center. This symbolized personal power, sexuality and pursuing one’s own will.

The Satanic Symbol of Baphomet

The metal plaque found in Holyrood Park depicts an upside-down pentagram within a circle, like that used by The Church of Satan. Inside the pentagram is a horned beast – Baphomet – which has been used symbolically in occult groups since the 19th century.Famous occultist Aleister Crowley connected Baphomet, the goat-headed idol, with Satan, and linked this icon with the idea of suppressed knowledge and secret worship.

In 1966, Satanism became a serious religious movement when The Church of Satan was founded by Anton LaVey. The logo adopted by the Church of Satan is known as the Sigil of Baphomet, which depicts a goat’s head inside an inverted pentagram within a circle – the same as the plaque found in Holyrood Park. This sign is also commonly used by Satanists around the world.

It is unclear how symbols of satanic worship ended up in Holyrood Park, but it seems that The Queen has some cleaning up to do!

***

BigLeaguePOLITICS

Democrat Spiritual Adviser Marianne Williamson Called Politics ‘BLACK MAGIC,’ Used Occult Terms

By Patrick Howley

July 1, 2019

Democrat presidential candidate Marianne Williamson said that the Left’s political battle is “black magic.”

Williamson, who reportedly serves as Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual advisor,” made the witchcraft-themed tweet on January 31, 2017.

“Just beneath the surface, this isn’t politics it’s black magic. Entirely a psychic battle. Use your shield of Virtue and your sword of truth,” Marianne Williamson tweeted.

The terms Williamson uses are popularly connected to fictional depictions of the occult. “Shield of virtue” is a spell in the World of Warcraft universe, and also figures into the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty as a magical plot point. The Sword of Truth fantasy book series revolves around wizards and the so-called “Wizard’s Rule.”

Williamson, a largely unknown figure in Beltway and American politics, attracted national curiosity for her bizarre performance in the recent Democrat debate.

“I’m going to harness love for political purposes,” Williamson said, addressing President Donald Trump in the debate, saying that Trump has harnessed fear and “only love can cast that out.”

“Magic happens when you tell the universe what you want it to do for you; miracles happen when you ask how you can be of service to the universe,” Williamson wrote on Facebook in 2012.

***

MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE

Temple Excavation in India Mysteriously Shut Down After Discovering Engraving of Strange “Foreign Face”

Sequoyah Kennedy

June 18, 2019

During an excavation of an ancient temple to Vishnu in the city of Singuali, Madhya Pradesh, Indian archaeologists found something quite strange: a 1,300-year-old brick engraved with the face of a “bearded foreigner” wearing a skullcap. It’s a complete mystery as to who this person was, or why there is an engraving of them on a brick. Even more mysterious, despite the many amazing archaeological finds coming out of this temple—which, according to the Times of India, push the urbanization of this region back to at least 2,000 years—the project has now been unexpectedly and immediately shut down by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the government ministry responsible for overseeing archaeological projects. According to the Times, sources within the ASI say that a “section of ASI officers are apparently uneasy over the puzzling brick engraving.”

This excavation is the first work being done on the site in 150 years, and was apparently going quite well. The team had apparently identified more promising mounds to begin digging in, and were expected to employ over 200 locals as the work progressed throughout the year. The shuttering of the project came as a complete surprise and the justification for it even more surprising. The letter sent by the ASI reads:

“Permission granted for carrying out exploration in landscape archaeological studies on religious architecture of Sidhi/Singrauli districts in favour of Temple Survey project (TSP) stands cancelled due to unauthorized excavations carried out contrary to the permission issued only for exploration.”

The site being excavated was an ancient temple to Vishnu.

If they were digging where they shouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be at all surprising. It would sort of be expected. But, according to an ASI official who spoke to the Times of India under the conditions of anonymity, archaeologists don’t usually need to ask permission to dig once they’ve gotten permission to explore a site. The unnamed official says:

“It is the duty and mandate of an archaeological officer to make excavations of an area where he/she believes that any area that is not protected contains ruins or relics of historical or archaeological importance.”

According to the Times, it seems as though the real reason for shutting the project down is what was being discovered. The “foreign face” engraving is apparently making the ASI uneasy, although the specifics of that uneasiness were left unsaid. Project superintendent Dr Madhulika Samanta described the uniqueness of the engraving:

“This is striking, as it means that a foreigner was allowed into the religious activities of the day. Such examples are extremely rare. Clothes of this type were not worn by people of the region in those days. The drawing on the brick shows the presence of such a person at a Vishnu shrine. The attire and features indicate a resemblance to such things found in West Asia.”

But why would that be cause to shut down the project?

The strange engraving wasn’t the only thing found during the excavation. The team also found a statue of Vishnu so unique that there are only a “handful” of similar statues that have been found, with this one being the oldest. Perhaps that’s a clue as to the ASI’s motivations. According to the team, the findings at the site had the potential to “add new chapters to the history of Central India.” According to Dr Samanta:

“The relics indicate the existence of a big city, which is rare in this region for the time. We have found several temples and monasteries of the early medieval period, but hardly any trace of big habitations such as this. There are very few such sites in India.”

One thing is for certain, no matter what the motivations for shutting down this excavation are, it only makes it that much more intriguing.

LifeNews.com

Unborn Babies are Being Extracted From Their Mother’s Wombs Alive to Have Their Livers Harvested (Some may find this article too disturbing. Ed)

OPINION DAVID DALEIDEN JUN 14, 2019

President Trump’s pro-life administration showed transformative leadership this week, prohibiting government laboratories from trafficking in aborted baby parts and intensifying the protection of human subjects for any remaining outside “research” authorized by statute. This new, exacting oversight is crucial.

I speak from some personal experience, having participated in gathering the Center for Medical Progress’ undercover videos of top-level Planned Parenthood leaders, who admitted the organization’s involvement in the trade in baby body parts. These videos shocked the conscience of the American people in 2015, but the atrocity of government-funded fetal experimentation grows more horrifying the closer we look.

National Institutes of Health (Health and Human Services’ research branch) grantee Dr. Jörg C. Gerlach, an “experimental surgeon” at the taxpayer-funded University of Pittsburgh, has developed and published on a grotesque technique to harvest fresh, pristine livers from intact babies delivered alive in late-term abortions “at a gestational age of 18 to 22 weeks.” Gerlach’s liver-harvesting “protocol” is used for experimental stem cell transplants according to “current Good Manufacturing Practice,” or cGMP, guidelines developed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, another arm of HHS.

“The abortions associated with our protocol were performed by routine medical induction; the labor was induced by local prostaglandin administration,” wrote Gerlach and his University of Pittsburgh Medical Center team. “Because we obtained the tissue from intact abdomens and removed the livers surgically under cGMP conditions, the tissue could be obtained in a sterile manner.”

The FDA’s cGMP guidelines require sterile tissue transplantation products, which means the abortion must leave the fetus intact, with internal organs unexposed to external pathogens.

The step-by-step, clinical details of Gerlach’s experiments are surreal: “Fetuses were collected and transferred to the current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) facility for human cell processing.” How does an NIH-funded researcher “collect and transfer” a five-month old fetus? “The specimens were placed into sterile bags containing University of Wisconsin liver storage solution, and each specimen was transported on ice immediately after the abortion to minimize the transfer time until cell isolation.”

Immediacy was key: “The logistics of the transfer of the fetus to the cell isolation facility required no more than 1 hour, and our protocol excluded the use of cells that were isolated more than 6 hours prior to transplant.”

They even washed the babies: “Upon its arrival at the cGMP facility, each fetus was weighed, rinsed with an iodine solution, and placed onto a sterile surgical tray.”

Then they cut their livers out.

Gerlach et al. first published their work in 2012 after he “designed and coordinated the program” and “developed the methods” for liver harvesting. Gerlach’s colleagues published a more detailed description of the technique in 2017, crediting him as its originator: “We developed a five-step in vivo perfusion method by umbilical vein cannulation to isolate liver cells from fetuses at the late second trimester,” they wrote. “The method used is based on the modification of the original technique of liver perfusion with collagenase, and has been adapted by J.C. Gerlach to the human fetal liver.”

In vivo, of course, means “in the living.” To a medical certainty, a 5-month-old fetus aborted intact by labor induction is alive at the time of delivery. Feticides such as digoxin cannot be used in a harvesting case, and the whole point of the Gerlach protocol is to obtain fresh, live, clean liver cells for transplantation minimizing time without circulation.

In other words, these babies either died when they were “submerged” in bags for transport, or after their bodies were cut open to harvest their livers.

Publications generally describe these vivisection and infanticide procedures taking place at a laboratory in Sicily, owned and operated by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, yet it appears at least some of this ghastly work was developed or practiced in Pittsburgh. Liver-harvesting papers that Gerlach co-authored in 2012, 2015, and 2019 thank his Pittsburgh OB/GYN department colleagues, one of whom owned the local Allegheny Reproductive Health Clinic abortion center, for providing “complete” fetal livers from five-month abortions.

The abortion providers at the local Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania are also on the University of Pittsburgh’s OB/GYN faculty. When I met them undercover in 2014, they told me that fetal organ and tissue harvesting was part of their abortion program at the University, and they were eager to implement it in their practice at Planned Parenthood.

Advanced Bioscience Resources, the decades-long Planned Parenthood business partner and frequent government supplier of aborted baby parts, also provides cGMP-quality tissue procurement, for fees of up to $7,000 per organ.

Gerlach’s fetal liver experiments with UPMC have received at least $2 million in grant money from the NIH since 2011, and his work’s exploitation of born-alive infants raises serious questions about whether HHS violated its own authorizing statutes in previous administrations. The same federal law that permits HHS to fund fetal tissue research forbids any involvement in live fetal experimentation except to save the life of the baby.

The NIH spent a record $115 million on fetal experimentation last year. How much taxpayer money has the NIH spent on infanticide at home and abroad? As Trump’s HHS rejects exploiting vulnerable infants like lab rats, the U.S. Department of Justice should do its job and hold accountable to the law those who traffic in baby body parts.

LifeNews Note: David Daleiden is a citizen journalist and founder and project lead at the Center for Medical Progress, responsible for the undercover video series in 2015 that exposed Planned Parenthood’s participation in the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal body parts.

Strange Sounds

The heat wave in Europe is so intense that a weather map of France looks like a screaming skull of death

June 28, 2019

The intense heat wave blasting Europe with record-breaking temperatures manifested on a recent weather forecast as a screaming heat skull of death looming over France.

A forecast map for Thursday, first created June 20, showed France’s scorching temperatures creating a giant, screaming face over the country as the country braced itself for the hottest temperatures since a 2003 heat wave killed 15,000 people in the country.

The heat wave in Europe is so intense that a weather map of France looks like a screaming heat skull of death

Much of Europe is being blasted by an intense heat wave that is causing fear and frustration for locals and officials.

And weather maps seem to feel the same way — a temperature forecast for Thursday looked like giant, screaming skull looming over France.

The forecast map, made by the website Meteociel on June 20, came as Europe prepared for record-breaking temperatures that officials worry could cause significant numbers of deaths.

A French meteorologist named Ruben Hallali first spotted the map, and he shared it on Twitter alongside Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.”

Authorities across Europe are taking precautions such as installing new fountains and pools, canceling school, and restricting driving to help citizens cope with temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 Fahrenheit.

Sometimes deadly hurricanes look like skulls or beasts… Now it’s a deadly heat wave in Europe. Terrifying!

***

The Economic Collapse

Look At This Map – It Shows Devastating Crop Losses Are Literally Happening All Over The Globe

by Michael Snyder

June 30, 2019

Let me warn you right up front – the information in this article might freak you out. If what some experts are telling us is true, a global food crisis appears to be inevitable. Even during good years we have a really difficult time feeding everyone on the planet, and now a major climate shift appears to be happening. Our sun has become exceedingly quiet, and many experts believe that this is a sign that a solar minimum is now upon us. Of course we have seen solar minimums happen quite regularly in the past, and if this is just a normal solar minimum then conditions should begin to return to normal after a couple of years. Unfortunately, evidence continues to mount that we have entered what is known as a “grand solar minimum”. In fact, Professor Valentina Zharkova says that what we are facing is a “super grand solar minimum”, and if that is true we are going to be facing climate chaos like we have never seen before. During previous “grand solar minimums” the globe was gripped by devastating famines and vast numbers of people died. Could a similar scenario potentially be in our future?

Ice Age Farmer has compiled a “Grand Solar Minimum Crop Loss Map” which you can view right here, and I appreciate our friends at ANP for pointing it out to us. Ice Age Farmer’s map shows that there are literally dozens of locations all over the globe right now that are reporting significant crop losses, and this is really unlike anything we have ever seen before. Some parts of our planet are dealing with horrific drought, but in the middle of the United States it just won’t stop raining. In some areas of the world it is too cold, while others are experiencing record heat. Everywhere we look we see extremes, and the behavior of our sun is the primary reason this is happening.

Last November I warned that we could be facing one of the coldest winters in modern times, and that is precisely what happened. Back then top scientists were warning us that a solar minimum had arrived, and since that time the behavior of the sun has continued to confirm that hypothesis…

The surface of the sun is normally a roiling, super-heated hellscape.

But Nasa images have revealed that the face of our star is looking ominously calm right now, prompting claims it’s reached a stage of its cycle called the solar minimum.

During the minimum, there are significantly fewer sunspots and its magnetic field weakens, allowing cosmic rays from outside our solar system to rain down on Earth.

This solar minimum came early, and that is exactly what we would expect if we were entering a “grand solar minimum”. Perhaps the best known “grand solar minimum” in our history was the Maunder Minimum which stretched from 1645 to 1715…

The last time a deep solar minimum was in effect was the Maunder minimum, which saw seven decades of freezing weather, began in 1645 and lasted through to 1715, and happened when sunspots were exceedingly rare.

During this period, temperatures dropped globally by 1.3 degrees celsius leading to shorter seasons and ultimately food shortages.

The food shortages during the Maunder Minimum were quite severe, and the global death toll was enormous.

Could we be facing a similar scenario this time around?

Actually, economist Martin Armstrong seems to believe that it could be even worse…

The Maunder Minimum created such a deep cold in Europe and extreme weather events elsewhere that what unfolds is a series of droughts, floods, and harvest failures. Historically, this leads to massive migrations, wars and revolutions. The fatal synergy between human and natural disasters eradicated perhaps one-third of the human population during the last event and this time we are crashing more rapidly than before. Therefore, we may exceed more than a reduction in population of one-third and reach the levels of the 14th century of 50%, which was also combined with the Black Plague.

Without a doubt, our planet is behaving very strangely right now, and reports of crop failures are regularly coming in from all over the planet.

Just check out these examples…

That layer of stress on the agricultural industry is only intensified when you zoom out to the international level, where farmers around the world are facing various dire situations. As one North Dakota farmer and Twitter user Jordan Gackle pointed out in a recent thread: Drought is continuing to disrupt wheat crops in Australia forcing the country to import some of its wheat from Canada. Some farmers in Canada are now reporting long stretches without rain under the hashtag #drought19. Head over to China and you’ll find that a legion of fall armyworms are spreading rapidly and devouring key grain crops.

It is becoming quite clear that food prices are going to rise substantially and that the world is going to produce a lot less food than it normally does this year.

And as I noted earlier, we have a tough time feeding everyone on the planet even during ideal conditions. Sadly, this even includes the United States…

In fact, it’s not just older Americans who are already suffering from hunger and malnourishment, with this 2017 story over at Feeding America reporting that more than 41 million Americans were suffering from hunger daily, including more than 13 million children, with this National Geographic story reporting that 1 out of every 6 Americans aren’t getting enough to eat.

So what will things look like if global food production drops 10 percent, 20 percent or even more?

We have never had to deal with anything like this in modern times, and meanwhile the population of the planet has grown from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.5 billion today.

We have entered the time of “the perfect storm”, and we are going to start to witness things happen that many people would consider to be unimaginable.

I truly hope that things will not be as bad as some of the experts are suggesting. But as far as crop failures are concerned, we don’t have to speculate. They are happening right now all over the planet, and that means that global food supplies are going to get tighter and tighter in the months ahead.

(“I was once young, indeed I am now old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread.” Psalm 37:25)

***

The Big Wobble
More than one million people in Japan have been ordered to leave their homes amid warnings of landslides and floods.

July 4, 2019

Photo Reuters
More than one million people in Japan have been ordered to leave their homes amid warnings of landslides and floods.
Residents of the island of Kyushu were told to 'take steps to protect their lives' due to the heavy rain in the area.
One elderly woman in Kagoshima city died after a mudslide hit her home.
The entire populations of Kagoshima city, Kirishima and Aira were ordered to leave, while another 930,000 people in the south of the island were also advised to evacuate.
One woman in an evacuation centre told NKH: 'I live alone next to a river, and it's scary to think of water rising', while another described the volume of rain as 'terrible'.
According to weather officials, 1,000mm (39in) of rain has fallen on the island since Friday.
The bad weather is also expected to continue into the next week, Japan's Meteorological Agency reports.
Japan's self-defence forces have been asked to assist with relief in the areas worst affected, Governor Satoshi Mitazono has said.
Kotaro Nogami, Japan's deputy chief cabinet secretary, said 14,000 ground troops were on standby for emergency rescue and search operations.
Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, said residents should 'take steps to protect their lives, including early evacuation' and urged them not to leave it until the last minute.
He was previously criticized for the government's slow response to heavy rains in July last year.
The downpours triggered numerous landslides and floods, killing more than 200 people across the country.

***

FOX NEWS

Significant earthquake rattles California, USGS says

By Ryan Gaydos

July 4, 2019

A 6.4 magnitude earthquake rattled parts of Southern California and Nevada on Thursday morning.

The quake occurred about 7 miles outside Searless Valley, located about 130 miles east of Bakersfield and about 200 miles west of the Nevada border, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Swarms of smaller quakes occurred immediately after the 6.4 magnitude tremblor struck the region. Several people took to Twitter to report that the felt the shaking. However, there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the quakes.

The Los Angeles Fire Department asked resident not to call 911 over the earthquake but only to report injuries or damage. Fire officials said they were in earthquake mode as a result of the tremblors.

“All 106 fire stations are out conducting a strategic survey of their districts to determine if any damage exists,” the fire department said in an alert. “Once this process is complete, an overall assessment of the impact in the City of Los Angeles will be compiled by Headquarters.”

The Los Angeles Police Department said it had not received any reports of damage or calls for help.

Los Angeles International Airport said operations are normal as crews inspected runways and terminals.

The San Bernardino County Fire Department said it was conducting an assessment as well.

***

MailOnline

Putin attacks Western views on gay rights and multiculturalism and says immigrants are free to 'kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights are protected' ahead of G20 meeting with May

• Russian president gloated that western Liberalism 'had outlived its purpose' and 'was on way the out' of favour

• Putin blasted Angela Merkel's 'cardinal mistake' of allowing a million refugees to enter German in 2017

• He said: 'This liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. That migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants have to be protected'

• He was speaking at the start of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, where he will meet Theresa May later

• Prime Minister will demand he takes responsibility for Salisbury poisoning and hand over Novichok assassins

• He said: 'This spy story, as we say, it is not worth five kopecks. Or even five pounds, for that matter'

• Trump has met Putin today with the US President saying with a smile: 'Don't meddle' in the US elections

By AMELIA CLARKE FOR THE DAILY MAIL and MARTIN ROBINSON, CHIEF REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 00:51, 28 June 2019 | : 17:37, 28 June 2019

Donald Trump has met Vladimir Putin today with the US President saying with a smile 'don't meddle' in the US elections, which was delivered with a smile

Article

***

Strange Sounds

Violent Stromboli volcanic eruption kills one tourist in Italy

July 3, 2019

The Stromboli volcano has violently erupted, killing a tourist in Italy.

Other people, terrified when ash started rising high into the sky, threw themselves into the sea.

Major Stromboli volcanic eruption kills one tourist on July 3, 2019 in Italy. Picture by James Atlee via BBC

Article

***

DEBKAfile

Urgent consultations in Washington, Moscow on reported US-Russian submarines in firefight

Diane Shalem July 2, 2019

First reports reaching DEBKAfile’s military sources say that a US submarine intercepted a Russian nuclear sub in American waters opposite Alaska. The Russian sub escorting the nuclear submarine responded with a Balkan 2000 torpedo and scuttled the US vessel. Urgent consultations in both the White House and the Kremlin were taking place on Tuesday night. US Vice President Mike Pence called off an appearance in New Hampshire after being recalled to Washington for a conference called by President Donald Trump without explanation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cancelled an engagement and headed for the Kremlin to confer with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and military chiefs, after learning that 14 submariners died in a fire that broke out on a nuclear-powered “experimental submarine in Russian waters.” This account carried in Russian media varies in most respects from the first reports reaching this site and may refer to a separate incident. They report between 14 and 17 members of an AS-12 nuclear powered submarine died of poisonous fumes caused by a fire aboard the vessel. The submarine was described as experimental and unarmed but often used in spy missions. It is unclear how many of the 25 crew survived. Local media suggest four or five are receiving treatment in Severomorsk’s military hospital for poisoning and concussion injuries. Another news account said the majority of the officers died in or on their way to hospital. These reports do not cite the cause of the fire.

***

RT

US will sanction any country that buys oil from Iran, no exemptions – special envoy

Published time: 28 Jun, 2019 13:26

US soldier stands guard as oil tanker makes its way towards Bahrain port in the Arabian Gulf. © Reuters/ Hamad I Mohammed/ FILE PHOTO

The United States will put sanctions on any country that imports Iranian oil, and no exemptions are currently in place, US special envoy for Iran Brian Hook told reporters in London.

The Trump administration’s hard-line economic policy against the Islamic Republic continues in response to Tehran downing a US drone last week. After Trump announced new sanctions directly targeting the Iranian leadership on Monday, the US now says they will enforce penalties on those who violate previous restrictions as well.

“We will sanction any imports of Iranian crude oil… There are right now no oil waivers in place,” Hook said when asked about continued sales of Iranian crude in Asia. Waivers had previously been in place allowing for several countries, reliant on importing Iranian oil, to continue buying it in spite of sanctions.

Hook explicitly mentioned reports that Iran’s largest buyer, China, has received at least one shipment since its sanctions waiver was revoked, reiterating: “We will sanction any illicit purchases of Iranian crude oil.”

Beijing has been highly critical of the decision to cancel the waivers, and they are not the only ones opposed to Washington’s obstinate measures in the international community. The EU continues to make accommodating efforts in order to convince Iran to keep adhering to the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, despite the US’ unceremonious withdrawal. The EU is expected to announce a multi-million dollar credit line to help ease trade next week.

Although the recent outbreak of hostilities began with Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal agreed by his predecessor, Hook told reporters that it was Iran who had “rejected diplomacy too many times.”

***

RT

‘Playing part in anti-Tehran policy?’ UK marines seize ship with alleged Iranian crude for Syria

Published time: 4 Jul, 2019 14:52 Edited time: 4 Jul, 2019 17:03

Oil supertanker Grace 1 near Gibraltar. ©Reuters / stringer

Iran has summoned the British ambassador after the seizure of a supertanker that was allegedly carrying crude to fuel-starved Syria in defiance of EU sanctions. It comes as the US is trying to stifle Iranian oil trade to zero.

The MT Grace 1, a 300,000-ton Very Large Crude Carrier, was detained in a raid conducted by the British Royal Navy Marines and Gibraltar law enforcement on Thursday morning. The government of Gibraltar, a British overseas territory located on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, said the ship was detained for allegedly violating EU sanctions on Syria.

The Panama-flagged vessel owned by a Singaporean company was en route to deliver its cargo to the Banyas refinery in Syria, Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said. “That refinery is the property of an entity that is subject to European Union sanctions against Syria,” the official explained. The EU imposed sanctions on the Syrian government in 2011, but this appears to be the first time a shipment of crude allegedly violating them was detained by a European authority.

Spain’s caretaker Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said the British targeted the tanker on a request from the US. He added that Spain, which considers the waters off Gibraltar as its own, was assessing the implications of the operation.

Iran has reportedly acknowledged ownership of the cargo. Its foreign ministry summoned the British ambassador in Tehran to protest the “unlawful seizure of the Iranian tanker,” according to the IRNA news agency.

According to Reuters, the MT Grace 1 has been used by Iran in the past to ship crude to Singapore and China in defiance of unilateral sanctions imposed against Iran by the US. The current trip allegedly started in Iran’s port of Bandar Assalyeh, thought the papers state that the crude was loaded in the Iraqi port of Basra.

In seizing the tanker under the pretext of sanctions on Syria, the EU seems to be at least partially siding with Washington, which is trying to cripple the Iranian economy through harsh economic sanctions. The pressure campaign was escalated after the US broke its commitment under the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

“Maybe the EU was trying to show that it was siding with the Americans, playing its part in anti-Iranian policy? We know that the Trump administration has been critical of the European countries,” Ali Rizk, a Middle East-based journalist and writer, told RT.

“And it’s likely a demonstration against Syria. It all helps an ongoing plan of parting Syria with its allies.”

The seizure also comes amid an escalation in the Gulf of Oman, where several tankers have been damaged in two separate incidents. Washington accused Iran of attacking the tankers, presumably to show it can interrupt the flow of Arab crude through the crucial waterway. Iran denied the accusation and said the attacks were likely false-flag operations meant to justify an increased US military presence in the region.

Syria has been experiencing fuel shortages for years amid devastating armed conflict within the country. A large part of its oil fields in the northeastern part of the country are currently controlled by the US-backed Kurdish militias.

Zero Hedge

Trump To Unleash Hell On Europe: EU Announces Channel To Circumvent SWIFT And Iran Sanctions Is Now Operational

By Tyler Durden

Fri, 06/28/2019 - 15:52

With the world waiting for the first headlines from the Trump-Xi meeting, the most important and unexpected news of the day hit moments ago, when Europe announced that the special trade channel, Instex, that will allow European firms to avoid SWIFT and bypass American sanctions on Iran, is now operational.

Following a meeting between the countries who singed the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was ditched by US, French, British and German officials said the trade mechanism which was proposed last summer and called Instex, is now operational.

As a reminder, last September, in order to maintain a financial relationship with Iran that can not be vetoed by the US, Europe unveiled a "Special Purpose Vehicle" to bypass SWIFT. The mechanism would facilitate transactions between European and Iranian companies, while preventing the US from vetoing the transactions and pursuing punitive measures on those companies and states that defied Trump. The payment balancing system will allow companies in Europe to buy Iranian goods, and vice-versa, without actual money-transfers between European and Iranian banks.

The statement came after the remaining signatures of JCPOA gathered in Vienna for a meeting that Iranian ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi called "the last chance for the remaining parties...to gather and see how they can meet their commitments towards Iran."

Until today, Tehran was skeptical about EU's commitment to the deal and threatened to exceed the maximum amount of enriched uranium allowed it by the deal after US had imposed a series of sanctions on the country.

Meanwhile, opponents of Instex - almost exclusively the US - have argued that the mechanism is flawed because the Iranian institution designated to work with Instex, the Special Trade and Finance Instrument, has shareholders with links to entities already facing sanctions from the U.S.

The announcement sent oil sharply lower, with crude futures falling about $1/bbl in closing minutes before settlement, extending daily loss, as it means Iran now has a fully functioning pathway to receive payment for oil it exports to anyone it chooses.

The announcement will likely send president Trump off the rails, because in late May Bloomberg reported that as part of Trump's escalating battle with "European allies" over the fate of the Iran nuclear accord, he was "threatening penalties against the financial body created by Germany, the U.K. and France to shield trade with the Islamic Republic from U.S. sanctions" including the loss of access to the US financial system.

According to Bloomberg, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, sent a letter on May 7 warning that Instex, the European SPV to sustain trade with Tehran, and anyone associated with it could be barred from the U.S. financial system if it goes into effect.

“I urge you to carefully consider the potential sanctions exposure of Instex,” Mandelker wrote in an ominous letter to Instex President Per Fischer. "Engaging in activities that run afoul of U.S. sanctions can result in severe consequences, including a loss of access to the U.S. financial system."

Germany, France and the U.K. finalized the Instex system in January, allowing companies to trade with Iran without the use of U.S. dollars or American banks, allowing them to get around wide-ranging U.S. sanctions that were imposed after the Trump administration abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year.

“This is a shot across the bow of a European political establishment committed to using Instex and its sanctions-connected Iranian counterpart to circumvent U.S. measures,” said Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

Here is a simpler summary of what just happened: this was the first official shot across the bow of the USD status as a global reserve currency, and not by America's adversaries but by its closest allies. And once those who benefit the most from the status quo openly revolt against it, the countdown to the end of the USD reserve status officially begins.

*

When asked to comment on the letter, the Treasury Department issued a statement saying “entities that transact in trade with the Iranian regime through any means may expose themselves to considerable sanctions risk, and Treasury intends to aggressively enforce our authorities.”

The US ire was sparked by the realization - and alarm - that cracks are appearing in the dollar's reserve status, opponents of Instex argue - at least for public consumption purposes - that the mechanism is flawed because the Iranian institution designated to work with Instex, the Special Trade and Finance Instrument, has shareholders with links to entities already facing sanctions from the U.S.

Separately, during a visit to London on May 8, Mike Pompeo also warned that there was no need for Instex because the U.S. allows for humanitarian and medical products to get into Iran without sanction.

“When transactions move beyond that, it doesn’t matter what vehicle’s out there, if the transaction is sanctionable, we will evaluate it, review it, and if appropriate, levy sanctions against those that were involved in that transaction,” Pompeo said. “It’s very straightforward.”

In conclusion, one month ago we said that "In 2018, Europe made a huge stink about not being bound by Trump's unilateral breach of the Iranian deal, and said it would continue regardless of US threats. But now that the threats have clearly escalated, and Washington has made it clear it won't take no for an answer, it will be interesting to see if Europe's resolve to take on Trump - especially in light of the trade war with China - has fizzled. "

The answer, it appears is that Europe felt unexpectedly emboldened, just hours before Trump's meeting with Xi, and that it is ready and willing to call Trump's bluff; it goes without saying, that if the US does indeed retaliate and proceed with sanctions against European banks, than the global trade war is about to turn far, far uglier.

Zero Hedge

Russia Launches "Floating Chernobyl" Bound For The Arctic

by Tyler Durden

July 1, 2019
Next month, the world’s first floating nuclear power unit (FPU) dubbed ‘Academik Lomonosov’ will be towed via the Northern Sea Route to its final destination in the Far East, after almost two decades in construction.

Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant has two KLT-40S reactor units that collectively generate 70 MW of energy.

A year ago we noted video of the beginning of the ships' voyage (from St.Petersburg to Murmansk)

The vessel is now expected to be towed “along the Northern Sea Route to the work site, unloaded at the mooring berth, and connected to the coastal infrastructure in Pevek,” added the press release.

Pevek is a small Arctic port town and the governmental center of Chaunsky District in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, located on Chaunskaya Bay.

Once the floating nuclear power plant is moored and connected to the coastal infrastructure in Pevek, the nuclear reactors aboard will be used to power 100,000 homes in the region, a desalination plant, and critical energy infrastructure assets. Rosatom said the floating power plant “will replace the Bilibino nuclear power plant and Chaunskaya TPP that are technologically outdated,” and become the most northerly nuclear facility in the world.

However, the floating nuclear power plant has been extensively criticized by antipollutionist — Greenpeace has called it a “floating Chernobyl.”

Nuclear reactors bobbing around the Arctic Ocean will pose a shockingly obvious threat to a fragile environment, which is already under enormous pressure from climate change,” Greenpeace nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp said in a statement.

“The floating nuclear power plants will typically be put to use near coastlines and shallow water … contrary to claims regarding safety, the flat-bottomed hull and the floating nuclear power plant’s lack of self-propulsion makes it particularly vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones.”

Meanwhile, Rosatom states the vessel meets all requirements from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and “does not pose any threat to the environment.”

“The FNPP is designed with the great margin of safety that exceeds all possible threats and makes nuclear reactors invincible for tsunamis and other natural disasters. In addition, the nuclear processes at the floating power unit meet all requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and do not pose any threat to the environment.”

Why would Russia want a floating power plant in the Arctic?

Speaking to reporters in 2017 after a conference with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Russia’s proposal to jointly explore the Northern Sea Route was “a great idea,” and that “China welcomes this idea and supports efforts with partners in the region to develop a ‘Silk Road on ice’.”

The Answer: To provide the needed energy to build infrastructure for the ‘Ice Silk Road.’

As CNN concludes, the last Russian nuclear project of a comparable scale was completed in 2007, when the "50 Years of Victory" nuclear-powered icebreaker finally sailed after sitting in the docks since 1989. Now, after more than 20 years of arguments, changes of contractors and economic crises, Russian engineers can finally take pride in launching the world's only nuclear floating rig.

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Ideas, Inventions, And Innovations

More Than 50 Uncharted Lakes Found Beneath Greenland's Ice Sheet

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Credit: © Dr Andrew Sole, University of Sheffield
Subglacial lakes are bodies of water that form beneath ice masses. Meltwater is derived from the pressure of the thick overlying ice, heat generated by the flow of the ice, geothermal heat retained in the Earth, or water on the surface of the ice that drains to the bed. This water can become trapped in depressions or due to variations in ice thickness.
Knowledge of these new lakes helps form a much fuller picture of where water occurs and how it drains under the ice sheet, which influences how the ice sheet will likely respond dynamically to rising temperatures.
Published in Nature Communications this week, their paper, "Distribution and dynamics of Greenland subglacial lakes", provides the first ice-sheet wide inventory of subglacial lakes beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet.
By analyzing more than 500,000 km of airborne radio echo sounding data, which provide images of the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet, researchers from the Universities of Lancaster, Sheffield and Stanford identified 54 subglacial lakes, as well as a further two using ice-surface elevation changes.
Lead author Jade Bowling of the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, said:
“Researchers have a good understanding of Antarctic subglacial lakes, which can fill and drain and cause overlying ice to flow quicker. However, until now little was known about subglacial lake distribution and behaviour beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet.
"This study has for the first time allowed us to start to build up a picture of where lakes form under the Greenland Ice Sheet. This is important for determining their influence on the wider subglacial hydrological system and ice-flow dynamics, and improving our understanding of the ice sheet's basal thermal state."
The newly discovered lakes range from 0.2-5.9 km in length and the majority were found beneath relatively slow moving ice away from the largely frozen bed of the ice sheet interior and seemed to be relatively stable.
However, in the future as the climate warms, surface meltwater will form lakes and streams at higher elevations on the ice sheet surface, and the drainage of this water to the bed could cause these subglacial lakes to drain and therefore become active. Closer to the margin where water already regularly gets to the bed, the researchers saw some evidence for lake activity, with two new subglacial lakes observed to drain and then refill.
Dr Stephen J. Livingstone, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, University of Sheffield, said:
“The lakes we have identified tend to cluster in eastern Greenland where the bed is rough and can therefore readily trap and store meltwater and in northern Greenland, where we suggest the lakes indicate a patchwork of frozen and thawed bed conditions.
“These lakes could provide important targets for direct exploration to look for evidence of extreme life and to sample the sediments deposited in the lake that preserve a record of environmental change.”
Contacts and sources:
Lancaster University
Citation: Distribution and dynamics of Greenland subglacial lakes

J.S. Bowling1,2*, S.J. Livingstone2, A.J. Sole2, W. Chu3 DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-10821-w http://www.nature.com/ncomms.

1Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK, LA1 4YQ
2Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, S10 2TN
3Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, USA, CA 943

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RT

‘End of humor without PC’: MAD magazine cancels new content after 67 years of political satire

Published time: 4 Jul, 2019 17:09

MAD magazine will no longer publish new content and the 67-year-old political humor and satire outlet won’t be sold on newsstands, prompting its fans to decry the end of an era as the anti-authority publication bites the dust.

The influential cult comic book and later magazine was launched in 1952, thrilling a generation with its sharp observations and ridiculing of US culture, politics and the media. In its heyday in the 70s, its circulation was 2 million as readers relished its jabs at advertising, hippies, and politicians, spearing both Republicans and Democrats in equal measure. It’s credited with teaching young people how to be skeptical of government and the media, and its longtime fans mourned the end of an era on social media on Thursday, sharing their favorite covers.

Fans are pointing the finger of blame for the publication’s demise on the current PC-obsessed culture which cries foul over dark comedy and alternative viewpoints, marking this moment as the “end of humor without political correctness” and noting that MAD was “too dark and smart for the Twitter era.” Magazines like MAD just can’t whip up the same instant frenzy as social media in this cancel-culture age, and as a result “parody is dead.”

MAD’s circulation steadily fell over the years as its popularity was upstaged by the likes of The Simpsons, The Onion, late night television and the endless alternative content online. Contributor Al Jaffee explained in 2010 that the people who grew up reading MAD were now working on late night shows like Saturday Night Live and Stephen Colbert, “So MAD is almost in a competition with itself.”

In 2001, it began accepting advertising for the first time and relaunched in 2017 after moving from New York to California, without most of its veteran staff. It continued to make sharp observations, with a 2018 four-page comic strip, featuring children who were about to become victims of a school shooting, attracting attention.

MAD’s ceasing of new content production comes as political cartoons experience a fall in popularity across the board, particularly in newspapers, said to be as a result of publications not wanting to offend their audiences. The New York Times announced in June it was cutting all political cartoons after an illustration sparked accusations of anti-Semitism, while Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder claimed he was fired by Brunswick News Inc after he created a viral cartoon featuring Donald Trump and a dead migrant.

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BEFORE IT'S NEWS

4 Signs Your Body is Too Acidic and How to Correct It

by N.Morgan

June 29, 2019

If the acidic value in your system is too high, it throws the body into a tailspin of poor health. The body is a machine that is fueled by a perfect balance of chemicals, bacteria, and cells. How to tell if your body is out of balance? Check out your pH levels.

If by any chance you don’t know anything about it, here’s what the pH values stand for the alkalinity or acidity in your body. To work properly, your body requires a perfect balance of acidity and alkalinity. Your stomach needs acidity to digest food and your system needs alkalinity.

The pH scale goes from 0 to 14. Values below 7 are considered acidic, and anything higher than that represents an alkaline environment. In some cases, the body becomes too acidic, triggering an avalanche of negative reactions.

How to tell if your body is too acidic?

Observe your body carefully, and you will learn a lot.

1. Excess weight

Acids increase the production of insulin and your body stores more fat. The natural detox system in your body is unable to deal with increased levels of acid and brings it back to fatty tissues. Your metabolism needs an alkaline environment, and it fails to do its job. Your body stops burning calories, and you don’t lose weight.

2. Weak bones

Your body gets alkali from different sources in the system, including your bones. It pulls calcium from bones in order to neutralize acidity. That’s how you end up with weak bones, fractures, and osteoporosis. If you are diagnosed with osteoporosis, avoid coffee and other acidic foods.

3. Sensitive teeth

A 2015 study released in the International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications confirmed the connection between acidity and damaged tooth enamel.

If you struggle with cavities or are unable to consume anything cold or hot, your tooth enamel needs help.

4. Sleep issues

Many Americans deal with chronic sleep deprivation, and it has something to do wit acidity.

Your body pulls calcium from your bones and the lack of this mineral leads to insomnia as confirmed by experts at the Human Nutrition Research Center in North Dakota.

Create an alkaline environment

Diet

Diet changes can do wonders for your overall health. Eat more of the following alkaline foods:

• Kale
  

• Broccoli
  

• Cucumber<>br

• Spinach<>br

• Arugula
  

• Collards
  

• Zucchini
  

• Soybeans<>br

• Tofu
  

• Nuts
  

• Seeds
  

• Legumesr

• Raisins

Foods to avoid:

• Dairy
  

• Eggs
  

• Meat
  

• Most grains
  

• Packaged, processed snacks
  

• Canned foods
  

• Caffeine

Baking soda and apple cider vinegar

Baking soda is an incredible product. When combined with raw and organic apple cider vinegar it’s even more powerful. Add a third of a teaspoon of baking soda to 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Wait for the fizzing to stop, and add in 8 ounces of water. Drink your alkaline potion.

If you don’t like using apple cider vinegar, use lemon juice. It works really great. Lemons are incredibly alkaline, and definitely, deserve a spot on your menu.

Get rid of your regular cleaning products

Commercial cleaning products are packed with chemicals that throw your body out of balance. Use natural cleaning products instead of your regular solutions.

References:

https://www.thealternativedaily.com/signs-your-body-is-too-acidic/

https://www.davidwolfe.com/4-signs-body-acidic-fix-it/

https://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/4-signs-your-body-is-too-acidic-and-how-to-fix-it/

Stories Contributed by N. Morgan

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

"But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
(2 Thessalonians 2:13, John 6:44)