“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
(John 1:29)

The Lamb
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

***

CHRISMANEWS

Where Do Angels Fit Into the End-Times Drama?

05/01/2017

What role do angels play in the end times? What place do these ministering spirits have in the unfolding drama that is the last days? Where do we find them as Jesus Christ returns for His glorious bride without spot or wrinkle? Angels play a vital role.

1. Angels Worship God in the End Times

"Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voices of many angels, numbering ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands ..." (Rev. 5:11). Angels have been worshipping God since they were created, and will continue this ministry for eternity. As we grow closer to the last of the last days, we should take a hint from the worshipping angels and focus on Jesus.

2. Angels Hold Back God's Winds of Judgment

"Then I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind would not blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree" (Rev. 7:1). Angels can be instruments of judgment or can help believers avert judgment. Judgment, when it comes, comes in God's timing.

3. Angels Sound the Trumpets of Judgment

"And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them" (Rev. 8:2). The angels are entrusted to blow these all-important trumpets, signaling judgment. Matthew Henry's Commentary explains, "Still the angels are employed as the wise and willing instruments of divine Providence, and they are furnished with all their materials and instructions from God our Saviour. As the angels of the churches are to sound the trumpet of the gospel, the angels of heaven are to sound the trumpet of Providence, and every one has his part given him."

4. Wage Spiritual Warfare in Heaven

"Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was there a place for them in heaven any longer. The great dragon was cast out, that ancient serpent called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down'" (Rev. 12:7-10). Angels war on our behalf also. They are mighty!

5. Preach the Gospel

As I started out saying in this column, angels don't preach the gospel—at least not yet. We know that because an angel appeared to Cornelius and told him to go find Peter so he could share with him the gospel (Acts 11:13-14). If the angel were permitted, the angel would have done so. But in the end times, the angels will preach the gospel: "Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the eternal gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and tongue and people" (Rev. 14:6).

***

RT

Christian Jakarta governor sentenced to 2 years for ‘blasphemy’ against Islam

Published time: 9 May, 2017 11:00

An Indonesian court has found the first Christian governor of Jakarta guilty of blasphemy against Islam, sentencing him to two years in prison. His supporters have blasted the verdict, fearing it signals the ‘Islamization’ of Indonesia.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, nicknamed ‘Ahok,’ was sentenced to two years in jail on Tuesday by the five-judge panel of the south Jakarta court.

He was "found to have legitimately and convincingly conducted a criminal act of blasphemy, and because of that we have imposed two years of imprisonment," head judge Dwiarso Budi Santiarto stated.

Other judges supported the blasphemy charge, saying that “the defendant didn’t feel guilt,” “caused anxiety and hurt Muslims,” and should not have used “words with negative connotations regarding the symbols of religions,” according to the Guardian.

The governor was arrested immediately after the verdict and taken to Cipinang Prison in east Jakarta, but is set to file an appeal. The sentence is harsher than prosecutors had called for as they had reportedly recommended two years of probation, AP reports.

Crowds gathered outside the court, demanding that Ahok be given the maximum five-year sentence for blasphemy.

***

CHRISTIAN POST

Jim Caviezel Talks Hollywood Rejection, Playing Jesus, Possible Sequel

BY JEANNIE LAW , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER

Mel Gibson (right) directs actor Jim Caviezel in 'The Passion of the Christ.'
"All of the sudden I stopped being one of five most popular actors in the studio, and I hadn't done anything wrong. I just played Jesus," the actor told Polish journalist and film critic Lukasz Adamski in a recent interview.

Adding, "Was I personally affected by this rejection? Well, everyone has their cross to bear. The world changes ... but I will not be in this world forever. Neither will the producers from Hollywood. At some point, everyone will have to answer for what they have done."

"The Passion of the Christ," released in 2004, was a blockbuster success, despite its lack of industry support, earning a staggering $612 million worldwide. With a production budget of just $30 million the commercial success was the highest grossing faith-based film in history.

The film received three Oscar nominations at the 77th Academy Awards but was awarded none.

The 48-year-old actor has no regrets. He has since appeared in the hit TV show "Person of Interest," and believes he was meant to play the role of Jesus Christ at the age of 33 because he shared the same age and initials of Jesus during the time of Christ death.

"Don't you tell me it was a coincidence! There are no coincidences. I keep hearing about 'accidents' and 'strokes of luck.' Secularization affects the entire world, including the USA. Only atheists believe in coincidence," Caviezel stated.

"There are no coincidences for God. Even when God resurrects the dead, they will say it happened by accident."

Following the release of "The Passion of the Christ" the film's megastar director, Mel Gibson, also faced his share of rejection. He has been working on his own independent film projects ever since and while he may have lost favor with the studios and found himself losing work after his drunk driving arrest in 2006, the tide has turned for Gibson. His latest film film "Hacksaw Ridge" nabbed six Oscar nominations.

The movie is based on World War II hero Desmond Doss who served in Okinawa during the bloodiest battle in the Pacific and miraculously saved 75 men without firing a shot.

Shane Black, director of one of Gibson's most legendary films, "Lethal Weapon," confirmed that the talented 61 year old had in fact been "blacklisted" after "The Passion of the Christ" and his arrest.

"I think he's essentially been blacklisted in the industry," Black told Business Insider in 2015. "I think people don't want to work with him."

But now, 10 years after Gibson's DUI charges on the Pacific Coast Highway in California, things are looking up.

Gibson received much praise and a "best director" Academy Award nomination for his work on "Hacksaw Ridge." The film also made over $160 million at the box office worldwide.

Caviezel shared that given the opportunity, he'd work with Gibson again. He said he would love to play a part in Gibson's planned "The Passion of the Christ" sequel, which will follow the Gospel stories after the resurrection.

***

BREAKINGISRAELNEWS

Ancient Caesarea to Get $27 Million Facelift, Will Become Major Tourist Site

By JNI Media April 28, 2017

“And I will turn the captivity of My people Yisrael and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them.” Amos 9:14 (The Israel Bible™)

An unprecedented renewal project that will upgrade Israel’s tourism product and enhance the glorious past and future of Caesarea was announced at a Wednesday press conference of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, Caesarea Development Corporation, Israel Antiquities Authority and Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

Among the archaeological discoveries that have been exposed and can now be visited by the public is the altar of a temple built by King Herod some 2,000 years ago in honor of Emperor Augustus and the goddess Roma, mentioned in the writings of Josephus Flavius – alongside the synagogue of Caesarea.

The project will introduce a cooperation on an unprecedented scale in exposing, conserving and making accessible the important public buildings of ancient Caesarea in Caesarea National Park, while developing and making the settlement’s beaches accessible. This involves an overall investment of more than NIS 100 million that were allocated for the project by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation and the Caesarea Development Corporation.

The project is being implemented as part of realizing the vision of 3 million tourists in Caesarea by the year 2030, and is becoming an important tourist-economic anchor for the residents of the region.

Caesarea has been a vibrant port city since its establishment about 2,030 years ago and throughout the various ensuing periods. Its importance and architectural wealth made it one of the premier cities in the Roman and Byzantine Empires. The archaeological excavations that are being conducted at the site in recent years on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, which are a continuation of the excavations from the 1990’s, have revealed many remains that range in date from the time of Herod until the Crusader period.

Together with the large-scale archeological excavations, extensive conservation and restoration measures and development of the harbor are taking place in Caesarea National Park. In fact, this is one of the largest and most important conservation projects ever undertaken in Israel. There is no other site in Israel where in recent years so many funds, resources and means of conservation and development have been allocated. This is a complex operation, which poses many challenges in planning and execution, while maintaining the values of the place. The project is being directed by conservator Yoram Sa’ad and architect Ya’ara Shaltiel of the IAA Conservation Department.

Upon completion of these activities the Caesarea Development Corporation and Israel Nature and Parks Authority will construct an innovative visitor center, installations for benefit of visitors, a spectacular archaeological park and an enchanting promenade that will begin at the ancient aqueduct (Aqueduct Beach) and connect to the city wall and fortifications promenade of ancient Caesarea.

According to the Israel Antiquities Authority director Israel Hasson, “the joint project is meant to expose, conserve and make use of Caesarea’s secrets for the enjoyment of the general public. To date, only about six percent of Caesarea’s treasures have been discovered, and magnificent finds on a global scale are buried beneath its sand dunes. This initiative must be a springboard for an ongoing national project to develop the Caesarea site in all its glory. It should be noted that beyond the archaeological activity, groundbreaking conservation measures are being carried out led by the IAA Conservation Department. We consider this project an opportunity for fostering educational activities at the regional and national levels, and invite the public and discharged soldiers to come, work, volunteer, and be partners in this creative effort.”

***

RT

Israeli ministers back nation-state bill delisting Arabic as official language

Published 7 May, 2017

A ministerial legislation committee has approved a controversial bill that seeks to enshrine Israel’s status as a nation state of the Jewish people, but critics say it would undermine democracy and could lead to discrimination of non-Jews.

The proposed bill would become a new Basic Law, which serve as Israel’s constitutional legislation. It would declare Israel a Jewish nation state and a unique realization of its right to self-determination. It would also set Hatikva as the country’s national anthem, describe the country’s national symbol and flag, and designate Hebrew as Israel’s only official language, although Arabic would be given special status. The bill also mentions the Right of Return – the right of ethnic Jews to receive Israeli citizenship.

Critics of the bill say it makes non-Jews de facto second-rate citizens in Israel, arguing that its emphasis on Jewish identity undermines the country’s commitment to being a democratic state, as is stated in its Basic Laws.

The legislation was drafted in August of 2011 by Avi Dichter, an MP for the ruling Likud party, and has been floating around in various versions since. The bill was one of the factors leading to the collapse of the Israeli coalition government in November of 2014, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a strong supporter of the legislation, clashed with then-Ministers Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid, who opposed it.

After winning a snap election in March of 2015, Netanyahu pledged to eventually pass a softer version of the controversial bill, but has faced opposition from some of his new ministers. In October of 2015, it was shelved to the chagrin of its supporters, only to return to the agenda now.

The bill is set to go to a preliminary vote on Wednesday during the first week of the Knesset’s summer session, the Jerusalem Post reported. The Justice Ministry will draft its own version within 60 days, and the two bills will be combined.

“I’ve been working on the Jewish State bill for six years,” Dichter recounted. “Six years to establish the simple and most basic truth: Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People.”

Zehava Gal-On, chairwoman of the left-wing Meretz party, has criticized the proposed legislation.

“The result of the Jewish State bill is clear. Jews will get preference over all other citizens, clearly violating human rights, democracy, and the rights of the Arab minority in Israel,” she said.

***

BREITBART

Erdogan Urges Muslims to Swarm Temple Mount to Save Jerusalem from ‘Judaization’

By DEBORAH DANAN9 May 2017

TEL AVIV — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday urged Muslims to visit the Temple Mount to act as a counter to the “insult” of “occupied Jerusalem,” and called Israel a “racist and discriminatory” state that is reminiscent of apartheid.

Erdogan also met with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to work on “unifying efforts to protect Jerusalem against attempts of Judaization,” the independent Palestinian Maan news agency reported.

“We, as Muslims, should be visiting Al-Quds more often,” he said, referring to Jerusalem by its Arabic name.

Erdogan said more Muslim visits to the Jerusalem holy site “would be the greatest support to our brothers there.”

“Both in terms of our religion and historical responsibility, Al-Quds and the fight of our Palestinian brothers for rights and justice is of great importance to us. We will keep making efforts for Quds to turn into a city of peace,” he added.

Hamdallah and Erdogan met in Istanbul to discuss “ways to support Jerusalem.” The meeting was also attended by Palestinian Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs Youssef Ideiss and Palestinian Governor of Jerusalem Adnan al-Husseini.

“It is impossible to find a solution and peace in the region without finding a fair solution for the Palestinian cause first,” Erdogan was quoted as saying.

“Israel keeps getting away from punishment,” he added, asserting that peace will never be reached “unless Israel is held accountable for its crimes.”

Erdogan also slammed Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as “racist and discriminatory” and compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.

“What’s the difference between the present acts of the Israeli administration and the racist and discriminatory politics that were practiced against black people in the past in America and up until a short time ago in South Africa?” he asked.

He also sent a veiled threat to President Donald Trump, saying that moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would be “extremely ill-advised.”

Erdogan added that the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip “has no place in humanity.”

Israel attacked Erdogan for his comments, calling them “baseless slander” and charging Erdogan with being a “serial human rights violator.”

“Anyone who systemically violates human rights in their own country, should not preach about morality to the only democracy in the region,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Israel strictly adheres to protecting full freedom of worship for Jews, Muslims and Christians — and will continue to do so despite this baseless slander,” the statement said.

“The fact that such an issue is even coming to the agenda is shameful,” he said. “The fact that those who talk about freedom of thought and faith at every opportunity actually approve this step by remaining silent is noteworthy. Inshallah, we will not allow the silencing of prayers from the heavens of Jerusalem.”

“Why are you afraid of the freedom of faith if you believe in your faith? I am now reminding Israeli administrators: If you believe in your faith, then why are you afraid of the sound of our prayers?” he asked.

The spat threatens the newly signed rapprochement deal between Israel and Turkey following a six-year rift in diplomatic relations.

***

RT

Palestinian flag flies over Dublin's City Hall in ‘gesture of solidarity’

Published 9 May, 2017

The Palestinian flag will fly over City Hall in Dublin, Ireland for the month of May "as a gesture of our solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

Passed on Monday by Dublin City Council, the motion was proposed by left-wing People Before Profit Councillor John Lyons, who said the move would support communities living under a form of “apartheid, worse than South Africa.” It was carried with the support of Sinn Féin and left-wing parties by 42 to 11, with seven abstentions. Center-right parties Fine Gael and Fine Fail opposed the motion.

The motion stated that the city council will fly the flag “as a gesture of our solidarity with the people of Palestine living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinian citizens of Israel denied basic democratic rights and with the over 7 million displaced Palestinians denied the right of return to their homeland.”

Writing on Facebook, Sinn Fein Councillor Larry O’Toole said he was “proud to speak in favor of and support the Palestinian flag flying over City Hall.”

‘Nakba Day,’ also known as ‘Day of Catastrophe,’ sees Palestinians commemorate their expulsion from their homeland between 1947 and 1949. This year will also mark the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War and Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) welcomed the announcement on Facebook, with Chairperson Fatin Al-Tamimi saying she was “speechless” as she thanked the Irish people for their support.

“The refugees created during this ethnic cleansing and their descendants now number in the millions, and all are shamefully still denied their internationally mandated Right of Return to their homeland,” she added.

In an letter to councilors ahead of the vote, Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Ze’ev Boker, said that flying the flag would be “highly politically charged,” adding that “some members of the Irish Jewish community are concerned by the negative message that the flying of the flag promotes.”

Sligo County Council, on Ireland’s west coast, also voted to fly the flag at its council building from May 15 until the end of the month.

***

PRESSTV

Kurds eye one-third of Syria with US support: Report

May 7, 2017

Members of the so-called Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) gather near the coffins of fellow fighters killed during Turkish airstrikes in Derik, Syria, April 29, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

A Kurdish official has revealed plans to enlarge the territory held by Kurds in northern Syria with US support, under which the Daesh stronghold of Raqqah would be annexed to the self-proclaimed Rojava region.

The scheme includes linking the self-proclaimed territory to the Mediterranean Sea, the person in charge of the project Hediya Yousef told British daily The Observer in an interview on Saturday.

“Arriving at the Mediterranean Sea is in our project for northern Syria, it’s a legal right for us to reach the Mediterranean,” Yousef said.

The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a 50,000-strong collection of Kurds, is preparing to occupy Raqqah before pushing deeper along the Euphrates valley and seizing the city of Dayr al–Zawr, the report said.

An official even revealed SDF plans to eventually push west to occupy Idlib which is currently controlled by a coalition of Takfiri groups, including the former al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front, recently renamed as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

Yousef confirmed that Kurdish forces would ask the US for support in setting up a route to the sea in exchange for their cooperation in retaking Raqqah, among others.

The self-proclaimed Rojava region, part of the northern Syrian territory bordering Turkey, is landlocked and has no coastal borders.

The SDF’s control over Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr would extend the territory called Rojava from the current 16 percent of Syria’s soil to a third of the country.

Yousef pointed out that Raqqah residents would be given a referendum asking if they wanted the SDF to form a government.

The expansion plan is set to outrage Turkey, which is carrying out airstrikes in northern Iraq and in northeastern Syria to prevent Kurdish separatists from carving out an independent state from the territories they occupy.

Turkey has been pressing the US to drop its military alliance with the People's Protection Units (YPG) which it views as part of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Washington, however, considers the YPG as one of the most important allies in Syria.

Following recent Turkish airstrikes, hundreds of US forces moved through northern Syria to the Turkish border in a dramatic show of solidarity with Kurdish militants that has stoked tensions between Washington and Ankara.

On Wednesday, a senior aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested American troops could be targeted alongside their Kurdish allies.

Both Turkey and the US have moved armored vehicles into the Turkish-Syria border, leading to a fresh escalation in tensions.

***

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

An excerpt from George Neumayr’s “The Political Pope,” to be released Tuesday.

May 1, 2017, 5:30 pm

After Pope Francis early in his papacy decried capitalism as “trickle-down economics” — a polemical phrase coined by the left during the Reagan years that Francis frequently borrows — radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh commented, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.” Talk show host Michael Savage called him “Lenin’s pope.” Pope Francis took such comments as a compliment. “I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended,” he told the Italian press.

Pope Francis grew up in socialist Argentina, an experience that left a deep impression on his thinking. He told the Latin American journalists Javier Camara and Sebastian Pfaffen that as a young man he “read books of the Communist Party that my boss in the laboratory gave me” and that “there was a period where I would wait anxiously for the newspaper La Vanguardia, which was not allowed to be sold with the other newspapers and was brought to us by the socialist militants.”

The “boss” to whom Pope Francis referred is Esther Ballestrino de Careaga. He has described her as a “Paraguayan woman” and a “fervent communist.” He considers her one of his most important mentors. “I owe a huge amount to that great woman,” he has said, saying that she “taught me so much about politics.” (He worked for her as an assistant at Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory in Buenos Aires.)

“She often read Communist Party texts to me and gave them to me to read. So I also got to know that very materialistic conception. I remember that she also gave me the statement from the American Communists in defense of the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death,” he has said. Learning about communism, he said, “through a courageous and honest person was helpful. I realized a few things, an aspect of the social, which I then found in the social doctrine of the Church.” As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he took pride in helping her hide the family’s Marxist literature from the authorities who were investigating her. According to the author James Carroll, Bergoglio smuggled her communist books, including Marx’s Das Kapital, into a “Jesuit library.”

“Tragically, Ballestrino herself ‘disappeared’ at the hands of security forces in 1977,” reported Vatican correspondent John Allen. “Almost three decades later, when her remains were discovered and identified, Bergoglio gave permission for her to be buried in the garden of a Buenos Aires church called Santa Cruz, the spot where she had been abducted. Her daughter requested that her mother and several other women be buried there because ‘it was the last place they had been as free people.’ Despite knowing full well that Ballestrino was not a believing Catholic, the future pope readily consented.”

These biographical details throw light on the pope’s ideological instincts. Yet many commentators have ignored them, breezily casting his leftism as a bit confused but basically harmless.

“I must say that communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian,” he said in 2014. Such a comment would have startled his predecessors. They didn’t see communism as a benign exaggeration. They saw it as a grave threat to God-given freedom, as it proposes that governments eliminate large swaths of individual freedom, private property and business in order to produce the “equality” of a society without economic classes.

In the early twentieth century, as Marx’s socialism spread across the world, Pope Pius XI declared the theory anathema. “No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist,” he said. To hear Pope Francis speak today, one might conclude the reverse: that no can be at the same time a good Catholic and an opponent of socialism.

“Inequality is the root of all evil,” Pope Francis wrote on his Twitter account in 2014. One can imagine Karl Marx blurting that out, but none of Francis’s predecessors would have made such an outrageous claim. According to traditional Catholic theology, the root of all evil came not from inequality but from Satan’s refusal to accept inequality. Out of envy of God’s superiority, Satan rebelled. He could not bear his lesser status.

He was in effect the first revolutionary, which is why the socialist agitator Saul Alinsky — a mentor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (who did her senior thesis at Wellesley on his thought) — offered an “acknowledgment” in his book, Rules for Radicals, to Satan. Alinsky saw him as the first champion of the “have nots.”

Were the 20th-century English Catholic satirist Evelyn Waugh alive today, he would find the radical left-wing political flirtations of Pope Francis too bitterly farcical even for fiction. Could a satirist like Waugh have imagined a pope happily receiving from a Latin American despot the “gift” of a crucifix shaped in the form of a Marxist hammer and sickle? That surreal scene happened during Pope Francis’s visit to Bolivia in July 2015.

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s proudly Marxist president, offered the pontiff that sacrilegious image of Jesus Christ. Morales described the gift as a copy of a crucifix designed by a late priest, Fr. Luis Espinal, who belonged to the Jesuit order (as does Pope Francis) and had committed his life to melding Marxism with religion. Pope Francis had honored Espinal’s memory upon his arrival in Bolivia.

Had John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI seen such a grotesque cross, they might have broken it over their knees. Not Pope Francis. He accepted the hammer-and-sickle cross warmly, telling the press on the plane ride back to Rome that “I understand this work” and that “for me it wasn’t an offense.” After the visit, Morales gushed, “I feel like now I have a Pope. I didn’t feel that before.”

***

THE CHRISTIAN TRUTHER

‘Spirit Artificial Intelligence’ Creating ‘Entities’ and ‘Summoning the Demon’

By Emily 05/08/2017

Spirit AI is taking Gods creation of the human soul and attempting to recreate it in their own online ‘entities’ by using the big data it collects from its social and game monitoring services.

In an interview with Develop Online Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris, SpiritAI’s chief creative officer stated, “at a top level, we’re trying to make AI more humanistic.”

How exactly they plan on doing that is much more sinister. What makes humans different than the rest of life? It’s not emotion, memories or the way we communicate. It’s our souls.

Spirit AI advertises its services by twisting scripture in a way that it attempts to diminish the power of God by saying, “Breathe humanity into your creations using the transformative power of artificial intelligence. Create expressive game characters, personal assistants and digital beings with personality, insight, and understanding.” Not only does this statement insinuate that the person creating the character is a god, but it also disregards the power of God breathing life into man in Genesis 2:7.

Genesis 2:7
The Lord God also made the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed in his face breath of life, and the man was a living soul.

Only God has the power to give a living soul, no matter what Spirit AI attempts to do they will never come close to recreating what God has made.

If they can’t harness a human soul in an avatar, they might be doing something far darker, summoning a demon.

In an example of the desktop application, Spirit AI displays how to create ‘entities.’ Considering that Elon Musk warned that artificial intelligence was ‘summoning the demon,’ Spirit AI’s statements should not be taken lightly.

Musk: I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence.

I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence, we’re summoning the demon. You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like — Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.

Spirit AI plans to harness a digital spirit that can express itself through speech, understanding, memory, insight, care, emotion and personality.

“One of the things I feel games have never really done is this idea of social physics, where players have to really think about communicating with other beings, and where or how they converse or interact – maybe using shorter sentences – will have a real impact, just as it does in real life,” Khandaker-Kokoris continues.

Spirit AI is using social physics to analyze social phenomena using big data. They believe that by teaching the AI social cues and such they can create more compelling characters for games. But that’s not their only intention.

“The idea of assistance bots has become a very real idea now, and using our tech there could be very powerful,” Khandaker-Kokoris offers as an example. “Now we have all these things like Alexa and Siri, which are great for short question and answer interactions, but they have no personality behind them. That’s not what the future of assistance AI should be. We want – again, going back to our original mission of building much more humanistic AI – to help people building these other technologies or working in other fields to build characters that actually have personality, and actually can work according to a particular agenda.”

Dynamic changes are occurring within the tech industry, which ushers the population from smartphones to virtual reality and or augmented reality. This game-changing technology is being introduced in a way that captures the hearts and manipulates the emotions of the user.

It won’t just be what players say that impacts the artificial thinking of Character Engine powered entities. “We want more than that,” Khandaker- Kokoris asserts. “We want to have what players are doing and how they stand relative to NPCs influence things in the scene, whether in a traditional game environment or something like room-scale VR.”

Player body language, eye-line, and attention may soon be factors to consider when pulling narrative from an NPC. The impact on games could be vast.

Mark Zuckerberg envisions the same future, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he teamed up with more companies like Spirit AI to make his dreams a reality.

Zuckerberg stated: “One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full, rich thoughts to each other directly using technology. You’ll just be able to think of something, and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you’d like. This would be the ultimate communication technology.”

Zuckerberg continued, “We used to just share in text, and now we post mainly with photos. In the future, video will be even more important than photos. After that, immersive experiences like VR will become the norm. And after that, we’ll have the power to share our full sensory and emotional experience with people whenever we’d like.”

All of the data the tech companies collect now will have a significant impact on the future as it aids them in creating the technocracy they desire.

Spirit AI’s other product Spirit Ally, creates an online ‘safe space’ where players can tell the AI what is and isn’t socially acceptable. From then on the bot observes all communication within the game and reports anything it thinks the player may view as offensive. If a situation occurs where the AI is unsure about what the player might think, it will ask the player if their safe space has been violated.

There is no doubt that online bullying and abuse is a serious problem, but another issue we face that is just as serious occurs when companies such as Spirit AI use cyberbullying to their advantage as an excuse to monitor communications and teach an AI. Facebook and YouTube are being called out for not censoring well enough, so what do they do? They use the complaints as a reason to implement artificial intelligence more heavily which in turn teaches the AI.

“Of course, Character Engine’s close relative is a rather different beast in terms of its aims. But Ally’s community management powers pull on exactly the same ability to harness and focus social physics and cognitive AI” says Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris.

Social metrics are being taken to teach AI to act more human. All of which is aiding in the jobless growth so many have predicted is coming along with the fourth industrial revolution.Imagine what this could mean if people like the creator of D-Wave who said artificial intelligence is the “altar of an alien god,” teamed up with Spirit AI!

The times we live in can be so harsh that people would rather dissociate into a distant online world where they can communicate with responsive avatars. The value of the human soul in our society has never been lower as they now wish to contain a soul in an AI.

WORKS CITED

Will Freeman. “Spirit AI: Talking Heads.” Develop. . (2017): . . http://bit.ly/2pVePbw

Spirit AI Ltd. “Home Page.” Spirit AI. . (2017): . . http://bit.ly/2peNFNV

***

WND

STUDY: MORE PROOF A MAN CAN NEVER BECOME A WOMAN

Scientists find '6,500 genes with activity that is biased toward one sex or the other'

Published 05.09.2017

A biological male can take hormones, surgically alter his body and identify as “female,” but the procedures still won’t make him a woman, according to new evidence found by Israeli researchers.

That’s because there are at least 6,500 genes that contain sex-specific instructions for males and females.

For the study by Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, professor Shmuel Pietrokovski and Dr. Moran Gershoni, both researchers from the institute’s Molecular Genetics Department, “looked closely at around 20,000 protein-coding genes, sorting them by sex and searching for differences in expression in each tissue. They eventually identified around 6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue, adding to the already major biological differences between men and women.”

Among Pietrokovski’s and Gershoni’s findings:

• Highly expressed genes found in the skin of men relate to body hair growth.

• Men have higher gene expression for muscle building when compared to women.

• Women have higher gene expression for storing fat when compared to men.

• Men have genes in their mammary glands that scientists believe suppress lactation.

• Women have genes that are expressed only in the left ventricle of the heart. One of these genes, which is also linked to calcium absorption, declines with age. Scientists believe the genes protect the heart and stay active in women until menopause, when gene expression is shut down and women experience higher risk of heart disease and osteoporosis.

• Women have a gene that’s active in the brain and may help protect them from Parkinson’s disease, which is more common in men.

• Scientists also found variation in gene expression in the liver, which likely accounts for differences in the way men and women process drugs.

The new findings are further evidence that biological males cannot simply “transition” into females and vice versa, argues Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

“This recent study from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science further proves that you cannot fool Mother Nature,” Staver said. “The saying, ‘I think, therefore, I am’ is best left to philosophy and not science. Gender confusion is mental, not physical or biological. God made male and female, and no amount of protestation will change the natural created order.”

Staver called the idea that a person can choose his or her gender “fiction.”

“These Israeli scientists identified over 6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue,” he said. “That clearly validates the genetic differences between men and women.”

As WND recently reported, the movement for “equality” has apparently inspired transgender athletes to join teams of their preferred gender, and debate is raging over whether biological males should be permitted to compete against biological females in sports. The National Collegiate Athletic Association and Olympics have instituted policies allowing transgender athletes to compete on teams that correspond with genders with which they identify, provided the athletes undergo a year of hormone replacement therapy.

Biological males are now joining women’s teams, smashing records and dominating in sports such as weightlifting, softball, cycling, track, wrestling, football, volleyball, dodgeball, handball, cricket, golf, basketball and mixed martial arts.

But in the world of sports, critics argue, equality between the sexes simply doesn’t exist. Physiologically speaking, there’s a gender gap between men and women that cannot be erased.

Aside from the gene-expression differences found in the latest study, biological males have a number of athletic advantages over women.

When it comes to running, men are generally faster than women. As the 2015 edition of Runner’s World explained, “At every distance up to the marathon, the gap between men’s and women’s world record times is nine to 10 percent – and it’s a similar or even higher percentage among recreational runners.”

Ohio University biological sciences lecturer Chris Schwirian told Runner’s World: “Faster men’s times for 100 to 800 meters are mostly due to men, on average, having greater muscle mass – and a larger portion of it is fast-twitch, which allows them to generate greater force, speed and anaerobically produced energy. At all distances beyond 800 meters, the main reason for the gap is men’s higher aerobic capacity [VO2max], on average, which is due to their typically having less body fat, more hemoglobin and muscle mass, and larger hearts and lungs than women.”

On average, men have longer and larger bones, which gives them mechanical advantages over women, since they have greater leverage, increased height and larger frames to support muscle. Their bones are also more dense, and they have tougher ligaments, making them less prone to sports injury.

Since these physical and physiological factors give most men a clear competitive edge in sports, is it fair or even safe for biological males – with larger muscle mass, hearts and lungs and greater strength, acceleration and speed – to compete against girls and women?

It’s now happening across America and around the world.

***

XAVIANT HAZE
THE CONQUISTADORS ENCOUNTERS WITH GIANTS

After a failed invasion of Northern Florida the Spanish conqueror and explorer Pánfilo de Nárvaez retreated back to port with a ragged bunch of restless men. More than half of his platoon had either been killed by the savage Florida jungles or were picked off by killer native attacks. Supplies had vanished, and when Narváez returned to the harbor he discovered that his ships had all disappeared. Returning to Cuba without him. He ordered the construction of four large rafts and told his fellow soldiers that this is “where New Spain ends”. It is not known for certain where and when Narváez died. The last man to see Narváez alive and tell of it was Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, a junior officer of the Narváez expedition. According to Cabeza de Vaca, when he asked Narváez for more food and provisions Narváez refused, basically saying “every man for himself.” The rafts took off for Cuba but were destroyed in a hurricane. Around thirty men survived the sinking of the rafts, but Narváez was not among them. Cabeza de Vaca and the remaining Spanish survivors washed ashore near modern-day Tampa Bay. They quickly formed an expedition to reach a Spanish settlement in Mexico and regroup there, thinking it was only a few miles away, but after a series of battles with hostile natives they ended up rafting their way into southwestern Texas. Traveling west along the Colorado River, de Vaca and the survivors of the ill-fated expedition became the first Europeans to see a bison, or American buffalo. De Vaca returned to Spain nine years later and published his story. It was the bestseller of its time. In it there are references to Conquistador encounters with giants.
De Vaca’s astounding tales mention an encounter with giant natives during a raid while in Florida: When we attempted to cross the large lake, we came under heavy attack from many giant Indians concealed behind trees. Some of our men were wounded in this conflict for which the good armor they wore did not avail. The Indians we had so far seen are all archers. They go naked, are large of body, and appear at a distance like giants. They are of admirable proportions, very spare and of great activity and strength. The bows they use are as thick as the arm, of eleven or twelve palms in length, which they discharge at two hundred paces with so great precision that they miss nothing.

In 1539 Hernando De Soto followed in Nárvaez’s footsteps sailing nine ships into Tampa Bay. As they ventured inland, they encountered various tribes each with a giant that reigned as chief.

For protection the Conquistadors took these chiefs hostage and called them guests. When the natives realized becoming guests meant being turned into slaves, the local tribes, led by Chief Copafi of the Apalachee, sparked an uprising. After weeks of warfare the chief was finally captured in a battle near what would become Tallahassee. Copafi was described as a man of monstrous proportions. Hernando De Soto’s encounters with giants continued as he pushed further inland in 1539. Traveling with more than six hundred men and two hundred horses, he trekked through North Florida, the southern swamps of Georgia, and the landlocked crossroads of western Alabama. Before dying of fever near the western banks of the Mississippi.

Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s private secretary, wrote a diary detailing the expedition. The new lands they explored were ruled by the giant Native American chief Tuscaloosa and upon the Conquistador's arrival, the Chief's son fiercely approached De Soto's calvary. Ranjel writes:Seeing him we paused, dumb with amazement. For, though but a youth...he towered on high. A great-limbed giant: heads of tallest men reached only to his breast. After a three day march De Soto and fifteen soldiers entered Tuscaloosa's village, and discovered that the chief was a giant ten times mightier than his son and turned out to be the tallest and most handsomely shaped Indian they saw during all their travels. After a few days of watching colorful war dances, Tuscaloosa was persuaded to join De Soto on their quest towards Mobile. While on the trail two of De Soto's soldiers turned up missing and the returning scouts returned to warn De Soto about the many Native Americans that had gathered for rebellion. De Soto, brave and defiant, approached the town and its high walls. A welcoming committee of painted warriors, clad in robes of skins and headpieces with vibrantly colored feathers, came out to greet them. A group of young Native American maidens followed, dancing and singing to music played on crude instruments. De Soto entered the town with his most trusted soldiers, Tuscaloosa, and the chief ’s entourage. The Spaniards stood in a piazza, surrounded by a stream of foreign colors and fluttering sounds. From here De Soto saw some eighty houses within the village. Several of them were described as large enough to hold at least one thousand people. Unknown to De Soto, more than two thousand Native American warriors stood in concealment behind the walls. After some of the chiefs from the town joined him, Tuscaloosa withdrew into the village, warning De Soto with a severe look to leave at once. Under a hail of arrows, De Soto and most of his men retreated from the village. After regrouping and devising their strategy, the Spaniards gained entry to the village, killed the chief's giant son, set fire to the buildings, and massacred the city’s inhabitants.

Despite the death of his son and overall carnage left in the wake, Tuscaloosa escaped. Riding deep into unknown lands, De Soto and his men marched to capture him, but the giant chief disappeared, and the pursuing Spaniards found only abandoned cities with massive mounds.

In 1519, Alonzo Álvarez de Pineda mapped the lands along the Gulf Coast, strategically marking the various rivers and bays, noticeable landmarks, and porting areas, all of which belonged to the king of Spain. After covering the coastlines from Florida to as far as Tampico, Mexico, Pineda sailed back to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Pineda was the first Spanish explorer to venture up the mighty Mississippi, and he reports finding a large settlement of native villages inhabited by giants. After the giants proved to be friendly, Pineda and crew settled among them to rest and make repairs. Pineda detailed the abundance of gold found in the river, and how the natives wore plenty of gold-engraved ornaments. It’s amazing how Pineda was more interested in the lands, good food, and the shock of discovering giants than he was in gold. He also noted that other than giants the tribes also had a race of tiny pygmies as well. Pineda described the tribe that settled near the Mississippi river as: A race of giants, from ten to eleven palms in height. As he sailed back to his home base in Jamaica, he made note of more giants, like the famed gargantuan's of the Karankawas encountered on the various islands of the Texas coast. When Pineda returned, he presented Francisco de Garay, the Spanish governor of Jamaica, with the first maps and sketches of the entire Gulf Coast. These maps also included Pineda’s writings about the fantastic race of giants living there. These sketches and writings are known as Garay’s Cédula and were archived by the famous Spanish compiler Martín Fernández de Navarrete. They can be found today by visiting the Archivo General de Indias, in Seville, Spain.

Twenty years after Pineda mapped the Gulf, Francisco Coronado

marched with a huge expedition across the American Southwest searching for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola, or what we refer to today as El Dorado. While on their quest Coronado’s expedition crossed paths with several tribes of Indian giants. We have this information thanks to the writings of Pedro de Castaneda, who accompanied Coronado and wrote the complete and amazing history of the expedition. A fascinating tale concerning giants found in Castaneda’s book details the journey made by Hernando de Alarcón. Low on provisions, a frantic Coronado sent Alarcón to find a river that could bring supplies more easily to the Spanish outposts along the California and Mexican coasts. After nearly destroying his ships and missing the waiting party at the rendezvous point, Alarcón haphazardly floated up the mouth of the murky Colorado River. Alarcón and his men became the first Europeans to fight the rough rapids as he brought his fleet into the heart of the Colorado River, reaching as far as the lower reaches of the Grand Canyon. While coasting up the river, Alarcón and his men came upon a settlement of an estimated two hundred giant warriors. These giants, amazed by foreign intruders on the riverbanks, were ready to attack. But Alarcón defused the situation by making peace and offering gifts, which eventually won them over. These giants were later categorized with the prevailing tribes of the area as being the Cocopa Indians. A thousand more members of this giant tribe were discovered and reported farther upstream.

Discoveries of giants have also been reported in Mexico. The Dominican friar Diego Durán is responsible for writing some of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs. His family moved from Spain to Mexico City when he was very young, which allowed him to grow up around the remaining natives of Mexico. While attending school he was frequently exposed to Aztec culture, then under the colonial rule of Spain. He continued to study and travel within the remaining city-states of the Aztec empire. In Texcoco he learned to speak and read the native Nahuatl Aztec language. By winning the Aztecs’ trust, he was able to gain access to a vast amount of knowledge concerning the history of pre-Columbian Mexico. His writings are some of the oldest known surviving texts that give us actual firsthand narratives from the ancient Aztecs. Because he spent thirty-two years among the Aztecs gathering information, learning how to read ancient native hieroglyphics, and interviewing old shamans, scholars regard Durán’s work as extremely important. In The History of the Indies of New Spain, he exhaustively describes the history of Mexico from its mysterious ancient origins up to conquest and occupation by the Spaniards. In these writings the Aztecs were not shy when it came to talking about giants. But Durán didn’t need to hear or read about them, he could see them. While living in Mexico he came in contact with giant Indians on several occasions. Writing about these encounters, he says emphatically: It cannot be denied that there have been giants in this country. I can affirm this as an eyewitness, for I have met men of monstrous stature here. I believe that there are many in Mexico who will remember, as I do, a giant Indian who appeared in a procession of the feast of Corpus Christi. He appeared dressed in yellow silk and a halberd at his shoulder and a helmet on his head. And he was all of three feet taller than the others.

During his thirty-two years among the Aztecs, Duran also interviewed many old Indians knowledgeable in the ancient ways and traditions of their people. From all these sources he learned about the giants. Bernardino de Sahagun and Joseph de Acosta, two other notable historians of about the same period, also knew about a tribe of giants who once occupied central Mexico, but Duran's book offers us the best and most complete account. Duran writes that, according to the Aztecs, the giants and a bestial people of average size once had this land all to themselves. Then, in A.D. 902, six tribes of people from Teocolhuacan, which "is found toward the north and near the region of La Florida," began arriving in Mexico. They soon took possession of the country. These six kindred tribes included the Xochimilca, the Chalca, the Tecpanec, the Colhua, the Tlalhuica, and the Tlaxcalans. A seventh tribe, the Aztecs, were brothers to these people, but they "came to live here three hundred and one years after the arrival of the others." When these six tribes had settled, Duran continues, "they recorded in their painted books the type of land and kind of people they found here. These books show two types of people, one from the west of the snow-

covered mountains toward Mexico, and the other on the east, where Puebla and Cholula are found. Those from the first region were Chichimecs and the people from Puebla and Cholula were 'The Giants,' the Quiname, which means 'men of great stature.' "The few Chichimecs on the side of Mexico were brutal, savage men, and they were called Chichimecs because they were hunters. They lived among the peaks and in the harshest places of the mountain where they led a bestial existence. They had no human organization but hunted food like the beasts of the same mountain, and went stark naked without any covering on their private parts....When the new nations came, these savage people showed no resistance or anger, but rather awe. They fled towards the hills, hiding themselves there.... The newly arrived people seeing, then, that the land was left unoccupied, chose at will the best places to live in. The other people who were found in Tlaxcala and Cholula and Huexotzinco are said to have been 'Giants.' These were enraged at the coming of the invaders and tried to defend their land. I do not have a very true account of this, and therefore will not attempt to tell the story that the natives told me even though it was long and worth hearing, of the battles that the Cholultecs fought with the Giants until they killed them or drove them from the country. "These Giants lived no less bestially than the Chichimecs, as they had abominable customs and ate raw meat from the hunt. In certain places of that region enormous bones of the Giants have been found, which I myself have seen dug up at the foot of cliffs many times. These Giants flung themselves from precipices while fleeing from the Cholultecs and were killed. The Cholultecs had been extremely cruel to the Giants, harassing them, pursuing them from hill to hill, from valley to valley, until they were destroyed. "Even if we detain the reader a little, I should like to tell the manner in which the people of Cholula and Tlaxcala annihilated that evil nation. This was done by treason and deceit. They pretended to want peace with the Giants, and after having assured them of their good will they invited them to a great banquet. An ambush was then prepared. Some men slyly robbed the guests of their shields, clubs, and swords. The Cholultecs then appeared and attacked. The Giants tried to defend themselves, and, as they could not find their weapons, it is said that they tore branches from the trees with the same ease as one cuts a turnip, and in this way defended themselves valiantly. But finally all were killed."

In his History of the Indies, Joseph de Acosta tells a story of the giants very similar to Duran's, but he also adds this eyewitness account: When I was in Mexico, in the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred eighty six, they found one of those giants buried in one of our farms, which we call Jesus del Monte, of whom they brought a tooth to be seen, which (without augmenting) was as big as the fist of a man; and, according to this, all the rest was proportionable, which I saw and admired at his deformed greatness...We must not holde this of the giants to be strange or a fable, for at this day, we find dead mens bones of an incredible bigness.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo marched as a swordsman in the army under Hernán Cortés during the conquest of Mexico. After surviving these expeditions he lived to be an old man and wrote what is regarded as an exceptionally accurate narrative of the famous campaign. His book would come to be known as The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Unfortunately Díaz died before seeing his book published. Fifty years later the manuscript was found in a Madrid library and finally published in 1632. The book provides an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico, and it remains one of the most significant sources documenting the collapse of the Aztec Empire and the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Díaz recounts the history of the now-defeated Tlaxcatec Indians, mentioning a race of enormous giants that had once inhabited their land. During these encounters Díaz even had the chance to examine firsthand evidence of this long-forgotten race. He writes:They said their ancestors had told them that very tall men and women with huge bones had once dwelt among them. But because they were a very bad people with wicked customs they had fought against them and killed them, and those of them who remained had died off. And to show us how big these giants had been they brought us the leg-bone of one, which was very thick and the height of an ordinary-sized man, and that was a leg-bone from the hip to the knee. I measured myself against it, and it was as tall as I am, though I am of a reasonable height. They brought other pieces of bone of the same kind, but they were all rotten and eaten away by the soil. We were all astonished by the sight of these bones and felt certain there must have been giants in that land.

An Italian scholar from Venice, Antonio Pigafetta, traveled with famous Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew on their voyage to the Indies. During the expedition Pigafetta became Magellan’s assistant and kept an accurate journal that detailed the various encounters with native giants. In Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative of the First Circumnavigation, there are numerous references to giants. Pigafetta amusingly writes: We had been two whole months in this harbor without sighting anyone when one day (without anyone expecting it) we saw on the shore a huge giant, who was naked, and who danced, leaped and sang, all the while throwing sand and dust on his head. Our Captain ordered one of the crew to walk towards him, telling this man also to dance, leap and sing as a sign of friendship. This he did, and led the giant to a place by the shore where the Captain was waiting. And when the giant saw us, he marveled and was afraid, and pointed to the sky, believing we came from heaven. He was so tall that even the largest of us came only to midway between his waist and his shoulder.

Throughout Pigafetta's narrative the giant indians repeatedly point to and ask if the Conquistadors had come from the sky. This is a very interesting side note that ties well into the ancient astronaut theory. Why the hell would they ask if they were from the skies if they had never seen anyone from the sky? Pigafetta was among the surviving 18 men who returned to Spain in1522. The other 240 men of the expedition all died, including Magellan.

Paul Craig Roberts

Sauron Rules in Washington

May 5, 2017

“The problem is that the world has listened to Americans for far too bloody long.” — Dr. Julian Osborne, from the 2000 film version of Nevil Shute’s 1957 book, On the Beach

A reader asked why neoconservatives push toward nuclear war when there can be no winners. If all die, what is the point?

The answer is that the neoconservatives believe that the US can win at minimum and perhaps zero damage.

Their insane plan is as follows: Washington will ring Russia and China with anti-ballistic missile bases in order to provide a shield against a retaliatory strike from Russia and China. Moreover, these US anti-ABM bases also can deploy nuclear attack missiles unknown to Russia and China, thus reducing the warning time to five minutes, leaving Washington’s victims little or no time in which to make a decision.

The neoconservatives think that Washington’s first strike will so badly damage the Russian and Chinese retaliatory capabilities that both governments will surrender rather than launch a response. The Russian and Chinese leaderships would conclude that their diminished forces leave little chance that many of their ICBMs will be able to get past Washington’s ABM shield, leaving the US largely intact. A feeble retaliation by Russia and China would simply invite a second wave US nuclear attack that would obliterate Russian and Chinese cities, killing millions and leaving both countries in ruins.

In short, the American warmongers are betting that the Russian and Chinese leaderships would submit rather than risk total destruction.

There is no question that neoconservatives are sufficiently evil to launch a preemptive nuclear attack, but possibly the plan aims to put Russia and China into a situation in which their leaders conclude that the deck is stacked against them and, therefore, they must accept Washington’s hegemony.

To feel secure in its hegemony, Washington would have to order Russia and China to disarm.

This plan is full of risks. Miscalculations are a feature of war. It is reckless and irresponsible to risk the life of the planet for nothing more than Washington’s hegemony.

The neoconservative plan puts Europe, the UK, Japan, S. Korea, and Australia at high risk were Russia and China to retaliate. Washington’s ABM shield cannot protect Europe from Russia’s nuclear cruise missiles or from the Russian Air Force, so Europe would cease to exist. China’s response would hit Japan, S. Korea, and Australia.

The Russian hope and that of all sane people is that Washington’s vassals will understand that it is they that are at risk, a risk from which they have nothing to gain and everything to lose, repudiate their vassalage to Washington and remove the US bases. It must be clear to European politicians that they are being dragged into conflict with Russia. This week the NATO commander told the US Congress that he needed funding for a larger military presence in Europe in order to counter “a resurgent Russia.” https://www.rt.com/news/387063-nato-counter-resurgent-russia/

Let us examine what is meant by “a resurgent Russia.” It means a Russia that is strong and confident enough to defend its interests and those of its allies. In other words, Russia was able to block Obama’s planned invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran and to enable the Syrian armed forces to defeat the ISIS force sent by Obama and Hillary to overthrow Assad.

Russia is “resurgent” because Russia is able to block US unilateral actions against some other countries.

This capability flies in the face of the neoconservative Wolfowitz doctrine, which says that the principal goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that can serve as a check on Washington’s unilateral action.

While the neocons were absorbed in their “cakewalk” wars that have now lasted 16 years, Russia and China emerged as checks on the unilateralism that Washington had enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What Washington is trying to do is to recapture its ability to act worldwide without any constraint from any other country. This requires Russia and China to stand down.

Are Russia and China going to stand down? It is possible, but I would not bet the life of the planet on it. Both governments have a moral conscience that is totally missing in Washington. Neither government is intimidated by the Western propaganda. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said yesterday that we hear endless hysterical charges against Russia, but the charges are always vacant of any evidence. https://sputniknews.com/politics/201705041053274379-lavrov-russia-us-relations/

Conceiveably, Russia and China could sacrifice their sovereignty for the sake of life on earth. But this same moral conscience will propel them to oppose the evil that is Washington in order not to succumb to evil themselves. Therefore, I think that the evil that rules in Washington is leading the United States and its vassal states to total destruction.

Having convinced the Russian and Chinese leaderships that Washington intends to nuke their countries in a suprise attack (see, for example, http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/04/us-forces-preparing-sudden-nuclear.html), the question is how do Russia and China respond? Do they sit there and await an attack, or do they preempt Washington’s attack with an attack of their own?

What would you do? Would you preserve your life by submitting to evil, or would you destroy the evil?

Writing truthfully results in my name being put on lists (financed by who?) as a “Russian dupe/agent.” Actually, I am an agent of all people who disapprove of Washington’s willingness to use nuclear war in order to establish Washington’s hegemony over the world, but let us understand what it means to be a “Russian agent.”

It means to respect international law, which Washington does not. It means to respect life, which Washington does not. It means to respect the national interests of other countries, which Washington does not. It means to respond to provocations with diplomacy and requests for cooperation, which Washington does not. But Russia does. Clearly, a “Russian agent” is a moral person who wants to preserve life and the national identity and dignity of other peoples.

It is Washington that wants to snuff out human morality and beome the master of the planet. As I have previously written, Washington without any question is Sauron. The only important question is whether there is sufficient good left in the world to resist and overcome Washington’s evil.

ENENEWS

Everyone on Earth has been irradiated by Fukushima — “Shocking new study reveals true extent of global impact” — “Scientists are only just now confirming far-reaching effects” of nuclear disaster

Published: May 8th, 2017 at 6:54 am ET
New Scientist, May 5, 2017: Fukushima accident gave everyone an X-ray’s worth of radiation — “We don’t need to worry,” says Nikolaos Evangeliou at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, whose team has conducted the first global survey of radiation exposure caused by the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant… Evangeliou’s team has calculated the approximate exposure of everyone on Earth to two radioactive isotopes of caesium… He has estimated the dose that most individuals received to be 0.1 millisievert. “What I found was that we got one extra X-ray each,” says Evangeliou… But Evangeliou says that the effects on wildlife around the plant might be more severe. Already, he says, increased levels of radiation around Fukushima have been linked to declines in bird populations there between 2011 and 2014. “There have also been reports of declines in other species such as insects and some mammals,” he says…

Daily Star, May 7, 2017: Global cancer fears as it’s revealed WHOLE WORLD got nuclear radiation blast; EVERYBODY on Earth was dealt a dose of radiation by the Fukushima triple nuclear meltdown, a shock new study has revealed… And the plant continues to release radiation to this day, despite efforts to contain the leaking. Now a study from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research hasrevealed the true extent of the global impact. Lead author Nikolaos Evangeliou told New Scientist magazine: “What I found was that we got one extra X-ray each.” According to the NHS website, people exposed to X-rays face the risk of developing cancer “many years or decades later.”… Most people got 0.1 millisievert of extra radiation from the Fukushima disaster

BGR, May 7, 2017: Japan’s nuclear disaster gave everyone on Earth extra radiation — It’s been over half a decade… but scientists are only just now confirming its far-reaching effects… each human on the planet received roughly 0.1 millisievert…

Massive Cyber Attack

counterpunch

Hanford, Not Fukushima, is the Big Radiological Threat to the West Coast

APRIL 29, 2016

by ROBERT JACOBS

There is a dangerous radiological threat to the West Coast of the United States that puts the health of millions of Americans at risk. It includes dangers to public health, dangers to the food supply, and dangers to future generations from long-lived radionuclides, including some of the most toxic material in the world. It is not Fukushima, it is Hanford. While radiation from the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns is reaching the West Coast, carried across the ocean from Japan, the radiation from Hanford is already there, has been there for 70 years, and is in serious risk of catastrophe that could dwarf the effects of Fukushima even on Japan.

Hanford, on the Columbia River in Eastern Washington State, is the site where the United States produced the majority of its plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. These tens of thousands of American nuclear weapons were built as an end product of the high levels of plutonium production at Hanford. The first three nuclear reactors on Earth were built at Hanford, with a total of nine nuclear power plants being built there eventually. Nuclear power plants operated for ten years in this world before they were ever used to generate electricity. Electricity is a secondary purpose for nuclear power plants, they were designed and built as plutonium manufacturing plants.

Hanford was the first of these plutonium production sites. The two worst radiological disasters (besides nuclear weapon detonations) in the first four decades of the Atomic Age were accidents at the plutonium production sites of the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, both in 1957. Military plutonium production sites remain among the most contaminated sites on Earth. During the period of operation more than 67 metric tons of plutonium were manufactured at Hanford. Hanford is home to 60% (by volume) of all of the high level radioactive waste stored in the United States. Nearly 80% of the Department of Energy’s inventory of spent nuclear fuel rods are stored just 400 yards away from the Columbia River. (Statistics taken from Physicians for Social Responsibility webpage)

Here is a very brief review of some of the worst impacts and dangers at the Hanford Site.

The Green Run

In December 1949 the United States deliberately released an immense amount of radiation into populated areas at the Hanford Site during the notorious Green Run. It was the largest intentional release of radiation conducted by the U.S. government. While nuclear testing in Nevada exposed many people to significant amounts of radiation, this was a byproduct of the desire to test weapons. In the Green Run the intention was specifically to release the radiation into the Hanford area. The Green Run was conducted in reaction to the test of the first Soviet nuclear weapon in Kazakhstan several months earlier. The first indications that the Soviets had successfully tested a nuclear weapon came when sensors at Hanford picked up the radiation several days later. It was decided to release radiation “similar” to that of the Soviet test to develop and hone detection equipment and better analysis of the Soviet program.

After the end of World War Two the U.S. method of processing the plutonium from the spent nuclear fuel rods involved “maturing” the rods, or letting them cool for approximately 100 days to allow short-lived nuclear isotopes (like iodine-131) to decay. Kate Brown has a detailed discussion of the decisions that eventually led to extending this maturing period at Hanford during this time in her pivotal book, Plutopia. The U.S. assumed that in their rush to produce nuclear weapons as quickly as possible the Soviets were “short-cooling” their plutonium being manufactured at the Mayak Complex, and thus processing the plutonium before these short-lived radionuclides had decayed. The Green Run was a plan to mimic this and process plutonium that had not cooled for 100 days, but instead had cooled only a few weeks and was, hence, “green.” To increase the ability of the radiation detection equipment in the area, and on the airplanes that participated, the filters at the plutonium processing plants that specifically filtered out iodine-131 were turned off for the 12-hour duration of the Green Run.

As bad as this deliberate release of radiation into the downwind communities was,things did not go as planned. The intended amount of iodine-131 to be released was dwarfed by the actual release, which was double what was anticipated. While scientists imagined they would then be tracking a coherent cloud as it moved away from the site, the resulting radiation dispersed throughout a vast area stretching across much of Washington State and into Southern Oregon. Concentrations were found in valleys and lowlands as the radiation distributed irregularly. Internalizing iodine-131 is a direct cause of thyroid cancer.

EPA map of iodine-131 distribution following the Green Run showing both heavy dose area and total distribution

The Tank Farms

Few things pose as great a threat to public health at Hanford than the Tank Farms. The Tank Farms are 177 single and double shelled waste storage tanks sited at two different locations on the Hanford complex. In the early days at Hanford, when plutonium for nuclear weapons was separated from the spent nuclear fuel, the leftover uranium from the process was stored in these tanks. Over the years a wide range of the highest level radioactive and chemical wastes were dumped into these tanks. According to the State of Washington the 177 tanks hold 53 million gallons of the highest level radioactive waste existing in the United States. 67 of the single shelled tanks have leaked over 1 million gallons of this highly radioactive waste which is migrating through the soil and groundwater into the Columbia River. In 2011 the Department of Energy emptied the contents of many of the leaking single shelled tanks into double shelled tanks, however the design of the double shelled tanks was found to be flawed, resulting in further leaks.

A section of the Tank Farms at Hanford. Photo: D0E.

Dealing with the 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste is a multi-billion-dollar effort designed to manage the waste by 2050, or roughly 100 years after it was first manufactured. Currently almost nothing has yet been accomplished towards this goal besides the paying out of the contracts to design plans and begin the construction of the “Vitrification Plant” that is intended to encase the waste in glass. In recent years’ numerous whistleblowers have come forward from among Hanford employees to describe the flawed design and safety protocols of the Vit Plant. Most of these whistleblowers have been fired by the contractors running the Hanford cleanup. One, Walter Tamosaitis, the research and technology manager of the Vit Plant, was vindicated and awarded $4.3M to settle his wrongful termination suit, however other whistleblowers have been dismissed from their positions since that award. While the liquid waste has been extracted from the tanks the remaining high level waste in the tanks remains largely untreated.

Hanford employees who work maintaining the Tank Farms have suffered serious and unexplained health problems in recent years. Each year numerous workers have been exposed to “vapors” and have become sick or lost consciousness and required hospitalization. Many have suffered ongoing health problems as a result of these exposures. In 2014 over 40 workers suffered from such exposures including a two-week period in late March that saw 26 workers hospitalized. According to KGW news in Portland, a 1997 study conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory warned that workers exposed to vapors from specific tanks would have significantly increase risk of cancers and other serious diseases, but the conclusions of this report“were never made public, shared with Hanford workers or members of the federally chartered Hanford Advisory Board.”

On 29 September 1957 a tank containing waste similar to the waste in the Hanford Tank Farms exploded at the Mayak plutonium production site in the former Soviet Union, known as the Kyshtym Disaster. The cooling system for one of the tanks at the Mayak site failed and the temperature inside the tank rose eventually causing a chemical explosion that sent a radioactive cloud for over 350 km downwind and heavily contaminated an area near the plant with catastrophic levels of cesium-137 and strontium-90. This was one of the worst radiological disasters in human history at the time, and remained so, along with the fire three weeks later inside a nuclear reactor core at the Windscale facility (now called Sellafield) in Cumbria in the United Kingdom, until the Chernobyl meltdown and explosion in 1987. The Kyshtym Disaster, which a Soviet study concluded resulted directly in 8,000 deaths (not to mention illnesses) was the consequence of an explosion in one tank. At Hanford there are currently 177 such tanks, each containing similar disastrous potential, and located beside one another.

Contaminations and Dangers

The EPA has identified between 1,500-1,200 specific sites on the Hanford grounds where toxic or radioactive chemicals have been dumped. The ambiguity of that number speaks volumes about the lack of record keeping and functional data for addressing these problems. If plans for remediation of the waste in the Tank Farms at the Hanford Site are carried out as intended, there remains massive contamination of the soil and groundwater under the site, leeching into the Columbia River and surrounding countryside. That is if things go well. Things could go badly. The Kyshtym Disaster shows the dangers of an explosion in one of the tanks storing waste such as that stored in the 177 tanks at the Hanford Tank Farms. An incident in which multiple tanks experience problems could be catastrophic beyond our imagination. What’s more, there is not effective containment or security at the Tank Farms to face the threats of current times. While the countries around the world worry about the dangers of flying airplanes or drones into nuclear power plants, or of cyber attacks on the power supplies to such plants, those sites have at least some effective containment around the toxic materials they hold. The Tank Farms are open air and unshielded. The amount of deadly radiological materials contained in these tanks is far beyond that contained at any single nuclear site in the United States.

Hanford is Here, Fukushima is There

The triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi was a horrible disaster that has released massive amounts of radiation into the environment. The daily passage of tons of water through the watershed below the plants where the melted nuclear cores (corium) sit smoldering will continue to release radiation into the ocean for decades to come. The health toll that this will take, especially on the children of Northern Japan is horrifying. Already a much higher than expected incidence of thyroid cancers have been reported in area youth. This is the first of the cancers to present and is the tip of the iceberg of health impacts on those in the area. The release of long lived radionuclides such as cesium-137 and uranium into the ecosystem presents dangers to people all around the world as these particles cycle through the biosphere. But the largest and most tragic impacts of Fukushima will be on people in Japan. The plumes from the explosions of March 2011 deposited the bulk of their fallout within a few hundred kilometers of the plants. Radiation from the regular releases of contaminated water into the ocean, and the passage of groundwater across the corium will continue to bring radioactive particles into the Pacific Ocean where they will work their way up the food chain much as the fallout deposited by atmospheric nuclear testing did in the Pacific during the 1940s and 1950s. Some of that radiation is reaching the West Coast of the U.S., and this will continue as long as the site hemorrhages contaminated water into the ocean, which will likely be for some decades. This disaster should not be discounted. But it should also be remembered that it is the people of Japan, and specifically the children of Japan who live in the areas where the fallout plumes deposited that face the direst of these consequences.

There is currently a great deal of awareness about the arrival of Fukushima radiation on the West Coast. There are many people who say they will not eat fish from the Pacific Ocean, or eat food from Japan. At the same time, there is no discussion about eating Salmon from the Columbia River, drinking wines from the Columbia Valley, or fruit from the orchards that fill the downwind area around Hanford. The amount of radiation in the Hanford area dwarfs the amount arriving on the West Coast of the United States on a scale that is mindboggling. What is arriving from Fukushima is the result of the meltdowns of three nuclear cores, and it is crossing an ocean. What is stored at Hanford and leeching into the Columbia is resultant from 2/3rds of the high level nuclear waste of the United States, and is from production that began decades before Fukushima was built. This is not just contamination that is arriving today, or this year, it has been saturating the groundwater and ecosystem of the Northwest for more than 70 years.

Furthermore, the impacts from Hanford are not only what may happen, but what has already happened. Hanford downwinders have suffered generations of cancers and other diseases across a wide area of Eastern Washington and beyond. There is a legacy of death and illness that spans generations downwind from Hanford, and the source of those diseases percolates away in the tanks and waste sites that sit along the Columbia River, spreading deeper into the surrounding ecosystem. The radiation from Fukushima may slowly seep across the vast Pacific, while at Hanford we have the threat of a radiological explosion or terrorist act that could release volumes more radiation than was released by Fukushima and deposited in Japan any day of any week, and spread radiation across the West Coast and mountain west.

By all means we should be vigilant and monitor the levels of Fukushima radiation that arrives on the West Coast of the United States, while remembering that the most profound victims of Fukushima are children living near the site. But we should turn our attention and concerns to the radioactive wound that seeps radiation into the ecosystem of the American and Canadian West every day and threatens it with a radiological disaster that would dwarf the worst that Fukushima has done even in Japan. Stand up for Hanford whistleblowers. Demand transparency on waste management practices and plans at Hanford. Stand up for the health of Hanford workers who are being exposed to dangerous vapors in their workplace. And demand support and compensation for the downwind families and workers whose health and wellbeing has been devastated by the most radioactive site in the United States.

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Jakarta Globe

Dead Giant Squid Washes Up on Seram Island in Maluku

Jakarta. The remains of a giant squid washed up on the shores of Seram Island in Maluku province earlier this week.

According to a statement Beritasatu.com received on Wednesday (10/05), a resident, identified as Asrul Tuanakota (37), discovered the 15-meter-long squid on Tuesday evening.

In the darkness, Asrul initially mistook the giant sea creature for a stranded boat.

The unusual finding attracted scores of residents to Hulung Beach at Iha village in West Seram district.

The reason for the giant squid washing up on the shore is still unknown, but it is believed to have been dead for at least three days before it was found.

Residents have meanwhile asked the government to help them remove the remains of the squid as it already started to decay.

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CNN

Irish beach reappears 33 years after being washed away

By Maureen O'Hare, CNN

Updated 1733 GMT (0133 HKT) May 8, 2017

CNN)A beach that was washed away by storms more than 30 years ago has reappeared off the west coast of Ireland.

The sands at Dooagh on County Mayo's Achill Island vanished in the winter of 1984, leaving nothing but bare rock and rock pools.

But over the course of a few days in April 2017 the Atlantic returned what it had stolen, depositing thousands of tons of sand and creating a brand new 300-meter golden strand.

The storms of 1984 "completely took every last grain of sand off the beach," Sean Molloy of Achill Tourism tells CNN.

But last month, "in the space of about eight or 10 days, these very strong winds came from the north," he explains.

"Apparently what that does is, it blows the surface water back, because this is a south-facing beach. The sea then takes the sands underneath and brings the sands up. That's what I've been told."

This YouTube video from March 2017 shows what the beach looked like before the sands arrived.

Achill is Ireland's largest island and its 57 square miles of rolling bogland, dramatic cliffs and pristine -- if windswept -- beaches have inspired writers including Graham Greene and Heinrich Boll.

With a population of fewer than 3,000, the main economy is tourism and the arrival of the new beach has given things an unexpected boost.

"It's lovely," says Roisin Lavelle, owner of Teach Cruachan B&B, which overlooks Dooagh Bay. "Mostly all you see is waves and rocks, so it has been been really lovely to see a big expanse of sand."

It's also coincided with a stretch of warm spring sunshine on a coastline known for its temperamental weather. "The weather is fantastic, it's been good for the last week or so," adds Lavelle.

Molloy estimates that Achill receives around 150,000 to 180,000 visitors a year, but the sunshine and the new beach have been bringing in the crowds. This past weekend "looked like a bank holiday weekend, so many people came."

But while the beach is ideal for an Atlantic stroll, Molloy isn't recommending people slip into their Speedos just yet.

"Because of the sand coming in, we don't know how safe the beach is now because currents could be changed and it'll take a little bit of time."

It's best to leave the swimming to the dolphins which regularly arrive in Dooagh Bay in large numbers.

"A lot of people come to Achill to look at the power of nature because you see the cliffs and the boglands and the beaches and mountains," says Molloy. "This is just one very vivid example of the power of nature."

And with the high spring tides over and the sunshine still holding, islanders are hoping their new beach is here to stay. Laughs Lavelle: "That'd be the icing on the cake, if we get the weather now!"

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EXPRESS

Ibuprofen WARNING: Regular usage for just ONE week 'increases heart attack risk'

EXPERTS have advised people to try and avoid regularly taking ibuprofen after research showed just a week on the painkiller was enough to increase the risk of a heart attack by half.

By Giles Sheldrick

Published May 10, 2017

A major new analysis has unmasked the health hazard in the common anti-inflammatory drugs with evidence suggesting the danger exists even after one day.

The scientists say the over the counter and prescription pills including ibuprofen, diclofenac, celecoxib and naproxen should now be used with care and at the lowest possible dose.

Heart attack risk increases with age and is made worse by raised cholesterol. So the experts say older people especially now need to carefully weigh up the need to take anti-inflammatories with their GP.

The latest strong note of caution over the group of medicines known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs] has been urged following analysis of the health records of almost 500,000 people.

Sotiris Antoniou, of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: “We now know all NSAIDs have the potential to increase the risk of having a heart attack. This paper suggests the larger the dose and the longer duration is associated with greater risk of harm.

“If you have any doubts or questions seek advice from a pharmacist or doctor. It’s a good rule of thumb with any painkiller to take the lowest dose that’s effective for the shortest possible time.”

NSAIDs are a group of drugs taken by patients suffering joint problems, backache and arthritis.

They are frequently prescribed to relieve pain, reduce inflammation and quell fever.

Although they are used by millions each day the NHS said the drugs were not suitable for everyone and could “sometimes cause side-effects”.

The latest research, published in the British Medical Journal, suggests it is wrong for people to assume the over-the-counter and frequently prescribed painkillers are harmless and safe.

Scientists from the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre based their findings on drug prescribing or dispensing data from 446,763 people in Britain, Canada and Finland 61,460 of whom had a heart attack.

The observational study found taking any dose for one week, one month or more than a month was associated with an increased risk.

Previous studies pointed to an increased risk of heart attack with particular NSAIDs, like rofecoxib, but the latest research suggests for all common NSAIDs the risk of heart attack starts as early as the first one to seven days of use.

The study also showed that use of NSAIDs in the first month at a high daily dose [celecoxib 200 mg], diclofenac [100 mg], ibuprofen [1,200 mg] and naproxen [750 mg] was associated with the greatest risk.

Overall, researchers found risk of a heart attack is increased by about 20 to 50 per cent with the use of commonly available NSAIDs. However, on average, the risk of a heart attack due to NSAIDs is only about 1 per cent per year.

Epidemiologist Michele Bally, who led the study, said: “Given the onset of risk occurred in the first week and appeared greatest in the first month of treatment with higher doses, prescribers should consider weighing the risks and benefits of NSAIDs before instituting treatment, particularly for higher doses. We studied more than 60,000 cases and our results were precise enough to conclude that the use of all common NSAIDs is associated with a heightened risk of heart attack.”

NHS guidance recommends adults and children over 12 can take 300-400mg of ibuprofen 3-4 times a day, increased to a maximum 2.4g daily if necessary. Packs of the drug are widely available in supermarkets for as little as 50p.

Dr Ian Campbell, a family GP from Nottingham for more than 30 years, said: “This is really concerning. We have until now been attributing most heart attack risk to NSAIDs like diclofenac but this study suggests the risk of taking more commonly prescribed drugs such as naproxen are equally large. Additionally, the risk appears to be fairly immediate, even within one week, so previous advice to use the smallest dose for the shortest period appears to be of reduced significance. We now need to evaluate every prescription for NSAIDs in those at risk. Older people with additional risk factors need to weigh up the need for anti-inflammatory medicines very carefully, every time.”

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “NSAIDs can be effective in providing short term pain relief for some patients – what is important is any decision to prescribe is based on a patient’s individual circumstances and medical history and is regularly reviewed.”

Experts were not able to say what the potential underlying cause for increased heart attack is but previous research has suggested it might involve drugs blocking prostacyclin, a hormone that protects blood vessels and the kidney and thins the blood.

Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “We already know these drugs increase your risk of having a heart attack. However, this large-scale study worryingly highlights just how quickly you become at risk of having a heart attack after starting NSAIDS. Whether you are being prescribed painkillers like ibuprofen, or buying them over the counter, people must be made aware of the risk and alternative medication should be considered where appropriate.”

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University said: “This new study has helped persuade me that there is probably a real association between taking these painkillers and heart attacks.”

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RiseEarth

Kill Almost Any Infection: DIY Natural Antibiotic Remedy

A DIY antibiotic remedy can be more effective than pharmaceutical drugs and less damaging to the liver.

If you drink the DIY antibiotic “stuff” I am about to tell you about on a regular basis, there’s almost no infection that can touch you. Here’s what the ten simple ingredients within it can do for you:

• It contains ACV (Apple Cider Vinegar) known to kill bacteria due to the presence of acetic acid. The unprocessed, unfiltered, organic versions (like Bragg’s) also contain a strand of proteins, enzymes, and friendly bacteria called “the mother” which makes its beneficial biological effects even more potent.

• It contains garlic, one of the oldest known antiviral and antibacterial substances available to humankind. Garlic, part of the allium family, contains allicin, a potent compound which kills infections on contact. Garlic also contains sulfur and selenium compounds which boost the immune system. Garlic is so potent, it is even chemoprotective, meaning it can kill cancerous cells.

• It contains onion. Raw, organic onion, also part of the allium family, has been used for over 5000 years to help treat and prevent disease. Companion cropping tomatoes with onions is even used in permaculture because it helps tomato plants fight diseases better.

• It contains peppers. Peppers contain a phytonutrient called Capsaicin, considered the holy grail of healing for a whole list of infections and diseases.

• It contains ginger. Another antibacterial and antiseptic powerhouse, ginger has been used for millennia. Within ginger are also phenols and gingerols which have been proven to curb chronic inflammation. Disease cannot form in a body that is not chronically inflamed.

• It contains ginseng. Raw ginseng root can boost the immune system, reduce depression, boost energy, fight inflammation, and even stoke the romance in your life. It has been used as an aphrodisiac for centuries. Ginseng (in its many varieties) contains ginsenosides which are thought to be the root (pun intended) of their efficacy in treating so many diseases.

• It contains horseradish. You might not think it, but horseradish is related to foods like wasabi mustard, cabbage, and broccoli. The Brassicaceae family of plants is known to support healthy blood sugar levels, promote healthy digestion, lower blood pressure, boost immunity, and fight many chronic diseases. It can even prevent cancer due to its high levels of glucosinolates.

• It contains turmeric. The curcumin in turmeric heals just about everything. There are more than 10,818 scientific abstracts that talk about turmeric’s benefits. I’ll save you some time form reading them all and just say it helps prevent chronic bacterial infections, reduces inflammation, reduces parasitic infection, boosts liver, heart, and digestive health, and cures cancer – among other things.

• It contains raw honey. If you can spare the extra expense use Manuka honey. This stuff will even kill the antibiotic resistant strains of MRSA (staff infections), and other diseases, but even regular, run of the mill, organic honey is replete with enzymes and nutrients which support immunity and boost energy levels.

• It contains bee pollen. Bee pollen regulates our metabolism, boosts immunity and can even help control seasonal allergies. It has more essential amino acids than any other animal based protein along with an incredible number of vitamins, minerals, proteins, lipids, fatty acids, enzymes, carotenoids and bioflavonoids all of which make it antiviral, antibacterial, and immunity-boosting. Bee pollen also acts as a powerful antioxidant and supports the liver instead of harming it like many pharmaceutical antibiotics do.

The Recipe for the DIY Natural Antibiotic Remedy

• 3 ½ cups of apple cider vinegar

• ¼ cup of chopped garlic

• ¼ cup chopped ginseng

• ¼ cup of chopped onion

• ¼ cup of grated ginger

• 3 fresh chili peppers, chopped

• 2 ½ teaspoons of grated horseradish

• 2 ½ teaspoons of turmeric

• 4 teaspoons of raw, organic honey

• 1 heaping tablespoon of bee pollen

Place the above listed ingredients in a bowl, and mix except for the ACV. Set that aside. Fill a mason jar (or two depending on the size you have handy) with the ingredients. Fill the jar(s) about 2/3 full with dry ingredients, and then pour the ACV over the top. You want to cover the ingredients completely with the liquid. You can add a small amount of water if necessary. Close the jar, seal well, and shake.
Keep the jar of your DIY antibiotic remedy in a cool, dry place for two weeks without opening it. You will want to shake it up and allow the ACV to saturate the dry ingredients a few times a day, though.
After two weeks have passed, place a thin gauze over the top of the mason jar and strain out the liquid. Place that liquid in another air-tight container in your fridge and simply sip on it daily. If you want your mixture to be extra strong you can let it infuse in the fridge for another six weeks. Only a teaspoon or two taken regularly should act as a natural antibiotic/antiviral against any disease or infection you are exposed to.

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

“The Lord God made the heaven and the earth, and every herb of the field before it was on the earth,and all the grass of the field before it sprang up.”
(Genesis 2:4-5)