The Safest Place To Be

When trouble happens, the only truly safe place to be in is the Lord! His Word tells us, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust. his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked." Psalm 91

The most important thing is to live close to the Lord and in His will and obey His word. then even if there is war and turmoil and confusion and chaos on the outside, you can have peace on the inside,in your own heart, through the prince of peace, Jesus Christ. He is faithful and never fails to keep those who trust him!

You will find that His word is always such a comfort and encouragement in the hour of greatest trial, even when everything seems to be going wrong and you are in danger. It is His word by His spirit in His love that makes you strong. So hide His word faithfully in your heart that you may be kept by the power of God and comforted in difficult times, now and in the future.

One very encouraging passage of scripture regarding God's ability to protect and keep those who love Him is the story of the house of Rahab on the wall of Jericho: the whole city of Jericho fell except the part of the wall on which the harlot Rahab's house was standing. Because she had faith and had received and protected His children, when God destroyed the whole city and everybody else in it, her little house was the only part of the wall that did not fall! ( Joshua 6) So why worry about it?

When His judgments fall on the wicked, they usually miss His children or His children are somehow spared from them. He says, "I will keep thee from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." (Rev.3:10) That doesn't mean that He won't ever allow us to be harmed. He won't allow any permanent damage, any permanent harm, and He promises to deliver us. If by no other way, He delivers us by death-- our graduation to heaven.

The promise is that He is going to keep us, one way or the other. So you don't ever have to worry about it. If He decides He would rather take you than take care of you, then you have it made, one way or the other. Dead or alive, you are safe.

What can man do to us? They can only kill the body, and after that there's no more they can do. By killing us, they release our spirits at last into the glorious spiritual kingdom of God!

(Excerpt from Refuge From The Storm by David Brandt Berg)

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WND

'PASSION' STAR: 'YOU HAVE TO TAKE JESUS'

Jim Caviezel shares personal testimony of faith

Published: August 10, 2014

Actor Jim Caviezel never imagined the physical and spiritual battles he would have to endure when he took the role of the Son of God in Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster “The Passion of the Christ.”

Appearing at the Rock Church in San Diego, Caviezel told the congregation he was wounded during a whipping scene and struck by lightning during the final take.

“The whip went over, and I had a 14-inch gash on my back. I went right down like in a football game when you get the wind knocked out of you. I saw God,” Caviezel said.

Caviezel tried to stay in character the whole time, which led him to constantly feel unworthy to play the Savior.

“I never thought I was good enough,” he said.

There were some light moments, however, such as the time Caviezel told Gibson not to take his Father’s name in vain while he was in character on set.

The most frightening yet powerful incident occurred on the final day of filming, during the crucifixion scene.

Caveizel said he felt a foreboding heaviness as he climbed the hill.

“I felt this evil presence come over me. ‘You’re a dead man.’ I remember thinking this is the best news I’ve ever had, because I know if I die I’m going to heaven.”

While on the cross, Caviezel’s body was blue from the pneumonia and breathing problems he’d been experiencing. Then a bolt of lightning came out of the storm clouds and struck him while he was hanging.

“What people witnessed was an illumination around my body and a fire on the right and left side of my head. And for one moment I was looking at myself from outside my body,” he said.

Many of the actors were indifferent about their roles in the movie, Caviezel said, but they all reacted with awe.

“When I was hit, everybody fell on their face,” he said. “The ground shook and that was the last shot of the movie.”

Today, Caviezel is part of an audio New Testament Bible series, “Word of Promise,” which he helped narrate along with an all-star cast.

Acknowledging that many are going through tough times, Caviezel said: “You have to take Jesus Christ into your life every day. He’s the one that encourages you to fast, to not just pray once a week. The Gospel is real! It’s not something you just put away.”

Before wrapping up his talk, Caviezel made a special appeal to anyone who had had an abortion or paid for one.

“Many people are a part of this great sin in this country. These are all God’s children and he brings them home. Now he wants to bring you home. Do you think your friend has more grace than God? Does your friend have more love than the Creator? It can never be. God forgives you and now he needs you to begin, to accept forgiveness.”

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CHRISTIAN NEWS

Study Reveals Most American Pastors Silent on Current Issues Despite Biblical Beliefs

August 12, 2014

Most pastors believe that the Bible addresses the current issues of the day, but few speak about them from behind the pulpit, according to a recent study from a prominent research organization.

George Barna was a guest on the American Family Radio program “Today’s Issues” on Thursday, where he explained a research project that he has been working on for the past two years. In his study, Barna’s organization asked pastors across the country about their beliefs regarding the relevancy of Scripture to societal, moral and political issues, and the content of their sermons in light of their beliefs.

“‘What we’re finding is that when we ask them about all the key issues of the day, [90 percent of them are] telling us, ‘Yes, the Bible speaks to every one of these issues,” he explained. “Then we ask them: ‘Well, are you teaching your people what the Bible says about those issues?’ and the numbers drop…to less than 10 percent of pastors who say they will speak to it.”

Barna’s group also polled pastors about what factors they use to gauge whether or not a church is successful.

“There are five factors that the vast majority of pastors turn to,” he outlined. “Attendance, giving, number of programs, number of staff, and square footage.”

“What I’m suggesting is [those pastors] won’t probably get involved in politics because it’s very controversial. Controversy keeps people from being in the seats, controversy keeps people from giving money, from attending programs,” Barna said.

Pastor Chuck Baldwin, a radio broadcaster and former presidential candidate, commented on the study in an article published on Friday entitled Odds Are that Your Pastor is Keeping the Truth from You Instead of Preaching It. He opined that Barna’s research shows that most pastors deliberately choose not to speak on the issues of the day despite knowing that the Bible speaks to them.


“That 90% of America’s pastors are not addressing any of the salient issues affecting Christian people’s political or societal lives should surprise no one,” he wrote. “It has been decades since even a sizable minority of pastors have bothered to educate and inform their congregations as to the Biblical principles relating to America’s political, cultural and societal lives.”

“Please understand this: America’s malaise is directly due to the deliberate disobedience of America’s pastors—and the willingness of the Christians in the pews to tolerate the disobedience of their pastor. Nothing more! Nothing less!” Baldwin continued. “When Paul wrote his own epitaph, it read, ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.’ (II Timothy 4:7) He didn’t say, ‘I had a large congregation, we had big offerings, we had a lot of programs, I had a large staff, and we had large facilities.’”

“It is time for Christians to acknowledge that these ministers are not pastors; they are CEOs. They are not Bible teachers; they are performers. They are not shepherds; they are hirelings,” he said. “It is also time for Christians to be honest with themselves: do they want a pastor who desires to be faithful to the Scriptures, or do they want a pastor who is simply trying to be ‘successful?’”

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WND

5-YEAR-OLD CHRISTIAN BOY CUT IN HALF BY ISIS

'This little boy, he was called Andrew'

Published: 22 hours ago

BOB UNRUH

WARNING: There are some images of purported atrocities against children at the end of this article. They are extremely graphic. Please exercise extreme caution.

(We have chosen not to display the images.)

The images of atrocities by members of the Islamic State jihadist group, also known as ISIS, against their soldier and civilian enemies in Iraq and Syria have been have circulating for some time. There have been reports, many documented in images and even videos, of ISIS crucifixions, executions, mass burials and worse.

But now a flood of new reports and photographs reveal such horrors being inflicted on children.

One such report came from the Anglican Communion News Service, which said the 5-year-old son of a founder of Baghdad’s Anglican church was “cut in half during an attack by the Islamic State.”

The report cited an emotional Canon Andrew White, chaplain of St George’s Anglican Church in Baghdad.

“I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half,” he said. “I baptized his child in my church in Baghdad. This little boy, they named him after me – he was called Andrew.”

The report said it happened in the Christian village of Qaraqosh after Kurdish forces left and Islamic State fighters arrived.

A Catholic.org report quoted a source, Mark Arabo, a Chaldean-American businessman, confirming the beheading of children by Islamic State fighters, who then “put their heads on a stick and have them in the park.”

“The world hasn’t seen this kind of atrocity in generations,” he told CNN.

The report, which included images, said the terrorists “who have invaded Mosul and other ancient Christian communities in Syria and Iraq have made music videos of themselves murdering civilians and captured soldiers.”

“They are literally enjoying the act of killing and the fear and suffering experienced by others. This sadism may be the purest manifestation of evil witnessed since the Rape of Nanking during WWII.”

Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern, which has staff members traveling in Iraq, has evaluated many of the reports and finds them “completely consistent with who these guys are.”

“They’re absolute barbarians. We’re at a loss of words to describe who these guys are.”

He cautioned, nevertheless, that news agencies and readers always should be a little skeptical of random images posted online, because there’s likely an element of propaganda in such disputes.

Some of the recent images appear that they may have been staged, he said. But others appear genuine.

The Anglican report quoted Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

“The horrific events in Iraq rightly call our attention and sorrow yet again. Christians and other religious minorities are being killed and face terrible suffering,” he said.

“What we are seeing in Iraq violates brutally people’s right to freedom of religion and belief, as set out under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is extremely important that aid efforts are supported and that those who have been displaced are able to find safety. I believe that, like France, the United Kingdom’s doors should be open to refugees, as they have been throughout history.”

The aid group Barnabas Aid, which provides assistance to the persecuted church worldwide, reported recently that “hundreds of thousands” of Iraqi Christians are facing a “humanitarian crisis” while fleeing from the terror of Islamic State fighters.

“At least 200,000 Christians are now thought to be fleeing towards the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Some of the displaced had already fled to the Nineveh plain from Mosul, which was taken by ISIS. … A number of towns have reportedly been completely emptied of their Christian populations,” the report said.

The Catholic.org report, which included multiple images, said Islamic State terrorists “have begun their promised killing of Christians in Mosul, and they have started with the children.”

“Several images have emerged of Christian children beheaded by ISIS, merely for being Christian,” the report said.

The report said the Muslim fighters crucified victims “because to them crucifixion is especially humiliating due to its Christian implications.”

The images show children lying in rocky fields where they died, a woman whose throat was cut and the decapitated bodies of children.

A Gospel Coalition “Factchecker” is warning that one of the images reportedly goes back to 2013 when it was claimed she was a Muslim Syrian girl named Fatima Meghlaj who was decapitated when Syrian forces shelled her home.

“ISIS is an organization that has committed heinous acts of violence and violated the human rights of many of our fellow believers,” the organization said. “But we must not partake in the spreading of lies, even if it is against our enemies.”

The report continued: “While it is possible that children are being beheaded by ISIS in Iraq, there is currently no credible evidence to support that claim. We should pray this report turn[s] out to be just rumor and that whatever other crimes are being committed, that God is sparing the children of Iraq from ‘systematic beheading.’”

Bishop Julian Dobbs of Barnabas Aid told WND he’s heard multiple accounts of “atrocities against all Christians, adult and children.”

“This is a disaster of almost unparalleled proportions for Christians,” he said.

The Catholic.org report said the images and videos are made and distributed “to intimidate others.” One showed blood gushing from a woman whose throat was slit. Another was of a “distraught father in Syria” holding the body of his decapitated daughter, who was executed because she was of a Christian family.

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4 News

Heading for Armageddon? Islamic State advances in Syria

13 August 2014

Islamic State Twitter accounts report a major victory in Syria, bringing the jihadist group closer to the Turkish border - and an ancient town associated with the countdown to Armageddon.

Update, 14 August 2014: since this article was written it has been reported that Islamic State fighters have captured the town of Dabiq.

Accounts verified as official Islamic State accounts, those belonging to Islamic State fighters and pro-Islamic State accounts tweeted that the towns of Akhtarin, Al-Masoudiya and Turkmen Barah had been taken overnight.

Militant fighters are reported to have beaten fighters from the extremist Islamic Front and more moderate Free Syrian Army to take the towns.

The significance is how far west into Syria this puts Islamic State fighters, and how close they now are to the Turkish border.

Advancing across the west will enable Islamic State to "choke off" supplies reaching rebels across the Turkish borders. There is also speculation that foreign fighters heading to the Syrian civil war through the Turkish border will be drawn into the Islamic State's ranks.

The advance into the north and west of Syria shows confidence and stronger control of the Islamic State's territory, Shiraz Maher, an expert in Iraq and Syria in the War Studies department at King's College London told Channel 4 News.

The group had previously controlled a town just 20 miles from the Turkish border last year, Azaz, but was "badly beaten" by the Free Syrian Army and withdrew.

Mr Maher told Channel 4 News: "Back then they (Islamic State) were not so well connected in terms of their land, Azaz was a bit of an outpost.

"This allowed the FSA to surround them and beat them up."

Since then Islamic State has made enormous gains in Iraq – and in doing so took large stockpiles of US-made weaponry that had belonged to the Iraqi army. This weaponry was quickly moved across the border into Syria.

Mr Maher said the militants were clever in getting the weapons out of Iraq – where it was feared they might face a Western-backed offensive in which they could lose their new arsenal – and into Syria where it was expected the US and other allies would not venture.

Since the fall of Mosul, and the subsequent international attention on Iraq, the Islamic State has made advances through northern Syria – but has also been consolidating the areas it controls.

"What they have now provides more of a corridor into the northern Aleppo countryside," Mr Maher said. "That is important."

It is thought that the Islamic State may now be planning a return to Azaz. If they do so they will likely capture an important border crossing at Bab al-Salam. As well as stifling supplies and gaining foreign fighters, this could also be very lucrative for Islamic State.

"You generate large revenue if you control the border crossing," Mr Maher said. "Goods come through and the people bringing them through have to grease the palms of certain people.

"If you are at the border you can also direct those goods into your own areas."

Armageddon

Between Akhtarin and Azaz there is another town whose significance to Islamist fighters is as much symbolic as it is strategic: Dabiq.

The town is mentioned in a hadith (report of the deeds, teachings and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) as a place where a great battle or "malahim" will be fought between two armies.

This "malahim" is equivalent to Armageddon in Christian teachings - a battle that will herald the destruction of the world.

The importance of this is how it feeds into the romance of Islamic State's jihadi mission. The group has used slick videos and social media to appeal to young men who believe, as Mr Maher puts it, that they are "on the cusp of history."

This is reflected in how Islamic State's glossy magazine, which reports victories, the destruction of shrines, and punishment of those who have not obeyed Islamic State's interpretation of shariah law, is named after Dabiq (pictured, right).

Islamic State accounts have referred to how the "malahim" is coming, referring to the Muslim's enemy as the armies of the West, or the US.

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ALT-MARKET.COM

Order Out Of Chaos: The Doctrine That Runs The World

Wednesday, 13 August 2014 03:46 Brandon Smith

“From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”

- Winston Churchill, February 1920, in an article that appeared in the Illustrated Sunday Herald

The concept of conspiracy frightens some people, so much so that they are willing to overlook any and all evidence that world events are for the most part directed, rather than chaotic and coincidental. For those who are uneducated and unaware, explanations for the terrible tides of politics and war generally revolve around a false understanding of Occam’s razor. They argue that the theory states that the “simplest explanation” is usually the correct one for any particular problem or crisis. But Occam’s razor actually states that the simplest explanation according to the evidence at hand is usually the correct answer for any given problem. That is to say, the simplest explanation must conform to the evidence, or it is likely not correct.

Unfortunately, “skeptics” of directed conspiracy often turn a blind eye to evidence that is contrary to their simple explanations, while arguing that simplification is its own vindication. In other words, they don’t feel the need to defend their simplistic world view because, in their minds, simplicity stands on its own as self-evident. There was a time when men believed that the planets revolved around each other because they were tied together by long glass strings, and this was evident to them because it was the simplest explanation they could come up with. The thinking of skeptics of the New World Order and concerted globalization is much like this.

The most common argument they tend to exploit is that the world is far too “chaotic” and that if the elites are actually seeking a fully centralized one-world system, they are “failing miserably” because so many cultures are so clearly divided. For anyone who holds this argument as logical or practical, first I would suggest they look beyond the surface of the various conflicts at the similarities between these so called “enemies.”

For example, what about the United States versus Russia? These two nations have a long history of opposing ideologies and have come close to war time and time again. Certainly, average Americans see themselves as individualists and Russians as socialist or communist. Average Russians see Americans as capitalist imperialists and see themselves as humanists. But what about their respective governments? What about their respective financiers and oligarchs? Do they really see each other as enemies?

If that were so, then why did American Wall Street tycoons and the U.S. military aid the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917?

A false paradigm was created when internationalists supported the Bolshevik Revolution and allowed Russia to become a communist-held country. The eventual Cold War that resulted created the rationale used by the military-industrial complex to build a massive standing army (which is not part of the U.S. Constitution), an army which could then be sent around the world to subdue various nations and even possibly be used to oppress the American people.

Even today, the false East/West paradigm continues, with America painted as the bumbling villain and Russia painted as the stalwart and reasonable objector. Yet Russia’s top government officials and our top government officials work closely with and answer to the same international financiers and elites, like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements, as I outlined in great detail in False East/West Paradigm Hides The Rise Of Global Currency and Russia Is Dominated By Global Banks, Too.

Even closer to current events, the U.S. has now entered into military operations against ISIS insurgents moving rapidly through Iraq’s northern regions toward Baghdad. However, if ISIS is the enemy, why did the U.S. and our ally, Saudi Arabia, support and train ISIS agents in Syria as well as Iraq?

Is it just irony that our government helped birth ISIS and now the White House is at war with the group? Or is it possible that maybe, just maybe, a greater plan is afoot?

As the sinister Rahm Emanuel famously said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

If a crisis of opportunity does not present itself in the time frame you need, why not ENGINEER a crisis to fit your goals? This is a tactic that has been used by elites for generations, and it is called the Hegelian dialectic.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s work was the very foundation of the collectivist/socialist ideology, and it inspired Karl Marx during his writing of The Communist Manifesto. Hegel was an avid statist who believed that the collective must be ruled and directed by centralized governance and that all individualism should be sacrificed for the greater good.

Hegel wrote that the state “has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.”

In his dialectic theory, Hegel conjured a strategy by which the establishment elites could control the masses through deliberately created division. To define the Hegelian dialectic method simply, the ruling body must first trigger a problem or crisis that causes the citizenry to react with fear and demand a solution. The rulers then offer a solution, which they had already predetermined before they had started the crisis; this solution would usually entail more power for the elites and less freedom for the citizens.

The world appears divided and chaotic exactly because it has been MADE that way by a select few in the globalist establishment. In fact, if you were to name any war in the past 100 years, any competent alternative analyst would easily produce undeniable evidence of the involvement of international banks and think tanks pulling strings on both sides.

If you don’t understand the concept of “order out of chaos,” then you’ll never understand a thing.

Engineered chaos serves several purposes. It provides distraction and cover for the elites to implement other plans that they would rather not have noticed.

It also provides a scapegoat for the masses, who are now divided against each other. When violent changes are implemented that produce destructive consequences, the people must be placated with an easily identifiable villain. Certain changes globalists wish to make in the way the world functions require the careful exploitation of scapegoats.

For example, the globalists at the IMF have been discussing the establishment of a global basket currency for years to replace the U.S. dollar.

Russia and the East have also, conveniently, been calling for the IMF to replace the dollar with their Special Drawing Rights basket.

And finally, as well as conveniently, the elites in the U.S. government have launched a controlled coup in Ukraine and initiated direct economic confrontation with Russia, thereby giving the East the perfect excuse to dump the U.S. dollar as world reserve and replace it with a basket currency system under the IMF. Despite claims that Vladimir Putin is “anti-globalist,” the Russian is in fact an avid supporter of the IMF, and has stated his goal is to continue Russia’s IMF membership in a larger capacity:

"In the BRICS case we see a whole set of coinciding strategic interests. First of all, this is the common intention to reform the international monetary and financial system. In the present form it is unjust to the BRICS countries and to new economies in general. We should take a more active part in the IMF and the World Bank’s decision-making system. The international monetary system itself depends a lot on the US dollar, or, to be precise, on the monetary and financial policy of the US authorities. The BRICS countries want to change this."

Yes, Vladimir, and so do the manipulative social engineers at the IMF...

Hopefully, you have the sense to see how this works: problem, reaction, solution. Economic or physical war is launched between East and West, while the dollar is killed in the process. The masses react by demanding a fair and balanced replacement for the dollar as world reserve so that economic stability can return. The Americans blame Russia and the East for their fiscal misfortune. The East blames the hubris of the West for its own downfall. Neither side blames the banksters, who started the whole calamity to begin with. And the elites swoop in as saviors with a new Bretton Woods-style agreement to appease all sides and cement their global currency system, the system they had always wanted. And with a global economic currency and authority in place, global governance is not far behind — order out of chaos.

This process is more psychological than political in its goals. One could argue that if the elites already have control of all central banks and governments, then why do they need a global government? The answer is that these men do not want secret global governance, they want open global governance. They want us to ACCEPT the idea as a fact of existence, for only when we agree to participate in the lie will they then have truly won.

The end result of World War I was the creation of the League of Nations and the argument that sovereignty leads to disunion and catastrophe. World War II led to the creation of the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. I believe that a third world war is nearly upon us, one that may involve weapons of monetary destruction more so than weapons of mass destruction. Each supposed disintegration of global unity has eventually led to greater centralization, and this is something the skeptics seem to forget. The progression of crises suggests that the next war will lead to total globalization under the dominance of a minority of elitists posing as "wise men" who only wish to bring peace and harmony to the masses. In the meantime, the skeptics will continue to mindlessly debate in the face of all reason that the whole thing was a fluke, an act of random mathematical chance, leading coincidentally to the one thing the establishment rulers crave: total global totalitarian micromanagement.

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The United States’ biggest 'allies' are funding ISIL

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar -- three of the United States’ biggest allies in the region -- are bankrolling ISIS terrorists.

Fri Aug 8, 2014 2:0PM GMT

Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com

US President Barack Obama’s authorization of airstrikes on ISIS targets in Iraq serves as an opportunity to remind ourselves which countries are bankrolling the deadly terror group.

The answer: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar – three of the United States’ biggest allies in the region.

Last night Obama announced limited airstrikes to slow the advance of ISIS fighters and help members of the Yazidi religious minority group who were forced to flee into a mountainous region in the north of Iraq to avoid slaughter.

However, the administration has failed to put pressure on several (Persian) Gulf states that are directly responsible for helping ISIS gain a foothold in Iraq in the first place.

As the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin documents, “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three US allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror.”

In addition to funding itself through criminal activity and punitive taxes imposed on the local population on pain of death, ISIS relies on a steady stream of income from countries that have bankrolled extremists… for years yet have faced zero backlash from successive White House administrations. Even evidence of direct Saudi involvement in 9/11 failed to generate any reconsideration of who America calls its friends.

“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the (Persian) Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”

State backing for ISIS, now the wealthiest terror group in the world, prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to point the finger directly at Saudi Arabia and Qatar during a France 24 television interview. “I accuse them of inciting and encouraging the terrorist movements. I accuse them of supporting them politically and in the media, of supporting them with money and by buying weapons for them,” said al-Maliki.

In failing to call these countries to account for funding ISIS, the White House has deliberately placed the importance of isolating Iran and Syria over and above the stability of the entire region.

The White House is also directly responsible for the spread of ISIS militants having backed other rebel groups in Syria which were once allied with and then taken over by ISIS.

Indeed, some evidence suggests that the US even trained some of the fighters who went on to join ISIS at a secret base in Jordan in 2012.

Aaron Klein was told by Jordanian officials that, “dozens of future ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents...”

Yet another US ally – Turkey – also trained ISIS fighters at a location in the vicinity of Incirlik Air Base near Adana.

According to a source close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Obama administration turned a blind eye to the fact that Turkey was equipping and then sending fighters to Syria before they went on to Iraq. The source even went on to accuse the White House of being “an accomplice” in the ISIS takeover of major Iraqi cities.

Whether or not the “humanitarian” airstrikes on Iraq are really aimed at stopping the terror wrought by ISIS, or are merely part of a ploy to create a justification for a long-awaited attack on Syria, the White House itself, as well as some of America’s closest supposed allies, all share some of the blame in aiding the growth of ISIS in the region.

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Reuters

British police raid pub in search for 'Holy Grail'

BY WILLIAM JAMES

LONDON Thu Aug 7, 2014 12:29pm EDT

(Reuters) - British police raided an English country pub this week in search of a stolen wooden relic believed by some to be the Holy Grail - a cup from which, according to the Bible, Jesus is said to have drunk at his final meal before crucifixion.

The Grail has captivated religious experts for centuries, spawning myriad theories about its location and inspiring numerous fictional accounts from the Middle Ages onwards.

The object of the police search, which was unsuccessful, was a frail wooden bowl known as the Nanteos Cup that has been attributed with healing powers since the 19th century, attracting pilgrims and others who believe it may be the Holy Grail itself.

After receiving a tip-off, a team of eight officers and a police dog arrived on Sunday morning at the Crown Inn, a village pub in the rural English county of Herefordshire.

"They turned the place upside down. They came with fiber optic cameras to look in all the corners and nooks and crannies, and under the floorboards ... they were clearly serious about it," the pub's landlady, Di Franklyn, said.

Police said the relic, a dark wooden cup kept inside a blue velvet bag, had been stolen from a house in the area about a month ago. Photographs available online show a bowl-shaped vessel with around half its side missing.

"We get a few rogues and scallywags in the pub, but no one who's quite on the level of stealing a priceless ancient artifact," Franklyn said.

The cup takes its name from Nanteos Mansion, a country house in Wales where the vessel is reported to have been stored until 1952 after 16th-century monks fleeing King Henry VIII's dissolution of England's monasteries sought refuge there.

The cup was said to have been brought to Britain after Jesus' death by Joseph of Arimathea, the biblical figure who provided Christ with a tomb and, according to legend, brought Christianity to Britain.

Scientists who have examined the cup have said it almost certainly dates from many centuries after the crucifixion, and is not made of the olive wood that might have been expected for a Middle Eastern drinking vessel.

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Antichrist and His Government Are Already Here
David Brandt Berg 1985

(Edited by People of the Keys)

Our friend and colleague, Joseph Candel from End Time Info, was kind enough to point out that David Brandt Berg had a later class concerning Daniel 8:14 pinpointing the cleansing of the Temple as being most likely at either the beginning or the end of the Battle of Armageddon rather then at the Second Coming of Jesus. Below is a copy of that class. This does not affect our introduction from August 2^nd titled “Private Interpretation”.

DANIEL 8:14--2300 DAYS!

WHEN IS THE SANCTUARY CLEANSED?

Now what do you suppose it means by the Sanctuary being cleansed? I have normally interpreted it to mean that the sanctuary is cleansed when Jesus comes back and rescues His Own in the Rapture, at the second coming of Christ.

But now think about it. (Bible prophecy teachers) just assumed that it meant that when Jesus came back, that that was the end of the Tribulation, therefore that was the end of the Abomination and therefore the sanctuary was cleansed. But was it?

We have learned a few things since then. We have learned from the end of the tribulation there is another period called the Wrath of God. It is a period of 75 days. In the 12th Chapter of Daniel it tells you exactly how long, because he gives you that many more days beyond the end of the Tribulation.

“And from the time of the removal of the perpetual sacrifice, when the abomination of desolation shall be set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. 12 Blessed is he that waits, and comes to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.” Daniel 12:11-12

Obviously, entering into the Millennium is the only thing you could call blessed, certainly not entering into the Wrath of God or entering into the Battle of Armageddon. He's talking about the people on the Earth, blessed is he that survives through all that and into the Millennium.

It's divided into two periods, what are they, 30 days and 45 days. We don't know for sure why He divided it that way, but I believe when it comes we're going to know. We have surmised that perhaps the 30 days is the Wrath of God and possibly it takes us 45 days with God's help to clean up the Battle. That's just pure theory, we can't prove it, but I'm theorising.

The two most important things happening (during that 75 day period) are the Wrath of God and the Battle of Armageddon, and it looks like to me that's probably what He's talking about. I can't prove it, you don't have to believe it, that's theory. The days are Scripture and exact.

But it would certainly be encouraging to the people still left on earth, still trying to fight the antichrist.

So, were we always right in saying that this cleansing happens when Jesus returns at the end of the Tribulation? Every now and then I have to back down on something, because I find out through Bible Study that the guys who taught me were wrong, that that's not exactly what it said.

(Do you think) even such a climactic, stupendous, colossal event (as the second coming of Jesus) is going to stop the Antichrist?

Do you think he's going to suddenly repent and make everything right and cleanse the sanctuary and take down his Image and get himself out of the Temple and say, "Forget the whole deal, I'm not God after all." Do you think he's going to do that? I can't believe that! It just doesn't stand to reason or logic that he'll repent just because millions of Christians are suddenly caught out of the World, I'm sure that's going to scare a lot of people half to death, but he's not people. He is the Devil in the flesh, Satan! He knows what's going on and he knows that his time is short, therefore his wrath is great and he's going to fight harder than ever and be more fiendish than ever and more Satanic and devilish and cruel and horrible than ever. That's why God's going to have to pour out such horrible Wrath on his kingdom.

His kingdom is still going to be in existence during the wrath of God. Do you think that he's therefore going to get rid of his Idol and cleanse the sanctuary, just because Jesus has come and raptured His Saints and they've escaped his clutches? Any kind of fiend or devil who loses his prey and who loses the spoil, is he happy about it? He is more furious than ever! That's why God has to pour out such horrible Wrath on him and his forces to try to spare the people who don't like him. It keeps him busy with so much trouble he can't persecute people very much any more. But do you think that's going to persuade him to stop all this man-worship, this devil-worship, this idol-worship, this worship of the Antichrist? Do you think he's going to cleanse the sanctuary then and repent and say, "I'm sorry, it was a mistake"?--I don't believe it, I don't see it!

I've gone over this passage again and again now and I just can't see that that fits! I've been studying this again and asking the Lord to give me the right interpretation. Let's be exact, here's an exact day prophecy, exactly, we know it begins with the daily sacrifices because it covers that period. We know it goes through the period of the Tribulation because it covers the period of the transgression of desolation. But it ends with the cleansing of the sanctuary.

Do you think the antichrist is going to cleanse the sanctuary right after Jesus comes and say, "Well, I'm so sorry. I don't believe it. I think some of those Bible experts and scholars are wrong about this particular interpretation, that it's cleansed at the Coming of Jesus. One reason is I think a lot of them are a little bit mixed up about what happens.

A lot of churches and Bible teachers and scholars and theologians and eschatological experts have that confused and make it one event, that when the Lord comes back to rapture His Church, they turn right around and come down on white chargers and fight the Battle of Armageddon and finish the works right then and there.

The Rapture of the Saints caught out of this Earth in the Antichrist Tribulation into Heaven is a distinct event separate from their return on white horses out of Heaven to fight the Battle of Armageddon and take over the World.

Daniel tells us it is 75 days from the rapture to the beginning of the Millennium. Maybe we'll have 30 days to get acquainted in Heaven, (the marriage supper of the Lamb, Revelation 19:6-9)a month-long feast.

DATE OF COMPLETION OF TEMPLE WILL BE LATER

What do you think would be the logical time, and by whom, for the Sanctuary to be cleansed?--In other words, (when is) this worship of the Antichrist stopped.

I'm a little more inclined to accept (that it will be at the end of the Battle of Armageddon) because we find out that Armageddon is going to occur from the Height of Megiddo to Jerusalem, two hundred miles away. Maybe we'll have to fight until the end of the battle when we really conquer them, to cleanse the Temple, to cleanse and destroy the Idol and kick out the Antichrist and send him to Hell. Maybe that's the most logical conclusion, that the battle isn't really over until we've captured him and tossed him into the Lake of Fire, cleansed the Temple and destroyed the Idol.

(On the other hand) if I was leading the army coming down from heaven supernaturally on great white horses and had supernatural power I think I'd attack the head of the government and its seat of government first. Maybe he's got such power and such power of the Devil and his demons and all that sort of thing that he can fight it and stave it off long enough until the end.

So I'm not going to tell you when these 2300 days end, because I don't know. But they do not necessarily end at the coming of Jesus. So that (would) change the date of the beginning of the Jewish sacrifices. It changes it at least from 30 to 75 days. Whether it's cleansed at the beginning of Armageddon or the end of Armageddon. So we're thrown 30 to 75 days off there. We could be wrong.

In other words, the completion of the rebuilt temple and resumption of sacrifices could be 30 to 75 days later.

But when the Jews begin to sacrifice again it will be 2300 days until the sanctuary is cleansed. (See link here on dates given in some Septuagint translations.) Undoubtedly it's either going to be at the beginning or ending of Armageddon. So it couldn't be more than 45 days off one way or the other, as far as we know, or 75 days. I'd say 45 days.

Whatever it is, that interpretation--you can call it guesswork if you want to--that interpretation that the cleansing of the sanctuary could not possibly occur until we've gotten rid of the Antichrist and his kingdom, which couldn't possibly occur until the Battle of Armageddon, whether it's at the beginning or the end of it, that throws our calculation of the completion of the Temple off about 30 to 75 days, and it then makes it later than we previously figured.

In other words, the completion of the Temple is going to be about a month to two-and-a-half months later than we had figured. We know the period of Tribulation is exat, 1260 days, no matter how you figure the years.

Whatever it is, it only throws off our previous estimate--which wasn't too accurate at that, in years and months, because it was 6 years and from 3 to 5 months, making it how many months after the beginning of the Antichrist reign? If it was 6 years and 3 months from the end of the reign, it would be 9 months from the beginning of his reign. But if it were 5, maybe even 6 months, 6-1/2 years from the end of his reign, it would be earlier. How much earlier? It would only be about 6 months. If it's 6 years and 3 months, it's 9 months till the Temple gets built and the sacrifice begins. If it's 6 years and 6 months and somewhere around there, it would be 6 months from the beginning of his reign.

So it could be that it's earlier. But since that period doesn't end until a month-and-a-half later, and since our estimate is so indefinite and unclear in months and years, don't worry about it! About all you can say is you know that the Temple will be rebuilt and sacrifices will begin sometime, and I would say a safe guess is within the first year of the Antichrist reign, depending on how long it takes them to get the Temple built.

I think that this 2300-day prophecy is mostly to let us know another definite sign of when the End is going to be, because when the daily sacrifices are resumed, we will know exactly how long it is going to be until either the beginning or the ending of Armageddon. Because that is a specific sign we can look for much earlier than the setting up of the Abomination of Desolation. We won't have to wait until the beginning of the Tribulation, we'll know much earlier than that.

Because when that happens, when the daily sacrifices are resumed, we'll only be about 9 months into the 7 years. The signing of the Agreement, the Covenant, is most likely going to be the very first sign of the beginning of the Antichrist Reign. The next sign that it is already in progress is the building of the Temple and the resumption of the sacrifices of the Jews. But the resumption of the daily sacrifices not only is a sign the Antichrist Reign is in progress but it is the first very specific and important sign of when the End will be, specific to within 30 to 75 days.

It is a much earlier sign than having to wait till the beginning of the tribulation to know when the end will be. It is kind of an early warning signal. In other words, we would know at least 2-and-1/2 years before the beginning of the Tribulation. It's one of the several different signs the Lord has given on His schedule, His Endtime timetable, to let you know where you are at.

When the sacrifices begin you'll know exactly how long it's going to be to the very day, to either the beginning or the end of the Battle of Armageddon.

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***

The New York Times

Using a Tactic Unseen in a Century, Countries Cordon Off Ebola-Racked Areas

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

AUG. 12, 2014

A soldier stood guard at a roadblock outside the Kenema district last week after Sierra Leone deployed troops to enforce an Ebola quarantine in the eastern part of the country.

Credit Tommy Trenchard for The New York Times

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is so out of control that governments there have revived a disease-fighting tactic not used in nearly a century: the “cordon sanitaire,” in which a line is drawn around the infected area and no one is allowed out.

Cordons, common in the medieval era of the Black Death, have not been seen since the border between Poland and Russia was closed in 1918 to stop typhus from spreading west. They have the potential to become brutal and inhumane. Centuries ago, in their most extreme form, everyone within the boundaries was left to die or survive, until the outbreak ended.


Plans for the new cordon were announced on Aug. 1 at an emergency meeting in Conakry, Guinea, of the Mano River Union, a regional association of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries hardest hit by Ebola, according to Agence France-Presse. The plan was to isolate a triangular area where the three countries meet, separated only by porous borders, and where 70 percent of the cases known at that time had been found.

Troops began closing internal roads in Liberia and Sierra Leone last week. The epidemic began in southern Guinea in December, but new cases there have slowed to a trickle. In the other two countries, the number of new cases is still rapidly rising. As of Monday, the region had seen 1,848 cases and 1,013 deaths, according to the World Health Organization, although many experts think that the real count is much higher because families in remote villages are avoiding hospitals and hiding victims.

Officials at the health organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which have experts advising the countries, say the tactic could help contain the outbreak but want to see it used humanely.

“It might work,” said Dr. Martin S. Cetron, the disease center’s chief quarantine expert. “But it has a lot of potential to go poorly if it’s not done with an ethical approach. Just letting the disease burn out and considering that the price of controlling it — we don’t live in that era anymore. And as soon as cases are under control, one should dial back the restrictions.”

Experts said that any cordon must let food, water and medical care reach those inside, and that the trust of inhabitants must be won through communication with their leaders.

The phrase cordon sanitaire, or sanitary barrier, appears to date from 1821, when France sent 30,000 troops into the Pyrenees to stop a lethal fever raging in Spain from crossing the border.

In Sierra Leone, large sections of the Kailahun and Kenema districts, an area the size of Jamaica, have been cut off by military roadblocks. Soldiers check the credentials and take the temperatures of those trying to go in or out. In Liberia, similar restrictions have been imposed north of the capital, Monrovia.

***

BUSINESS INSIDER

Ron Paul On Ebola: 'Governments Deceive Us'

COLIN CAMPBELL

AUG. 14, 2014, 8:34 AM

Former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas) thinks the threat of the Ebola virus very well may be a government plan to "deceive" the public.

"I do know that governments deceive us and sometimes they hype things. I don't think we are going to see in the next year a horrendous breakout of Ebola in this country," Paul said in a recent video on the topic, according to a press release sent out Thursday morning by his "Voices of Liberty" project.

Paul, "a former physician," offered the chemical DDT as a "viable alternative for treatment," as the release put it. The proposal would likely face some resistance as DDT is also a controversial insecticide that "may cause serious health effects," according to Scientific American. But Paul believes those health risks were never proven.

"The absolute proof of the danger of DDT was never — as far as I'm concerned — proven," Paul argued. "Instead, what we do is use very expensive organic phosphates [to treat Ebola], which do kill people. ... If DDT isn't quite as dangerous as they said, and if you could save a million people from this illness ... then we could think about it."

There is no evidence that DDT or organic phosphates, both of which are insecticides, would treat Ebola or control its spread. DDT's usefulness in combating Malaria was due to its ability to control mosquitoes carrying the disease. Ebola, in contrast, is transmitted through bodily fluids.

This is hardly the first time Paul has waded into a controversial issue making headlines around the world. In July, Paul defended the Russian government after the U.S. partially blamed them for the downing of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet over Ukraine.

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KWN

Stockman - Expect Historic & Worldwide Financial Destruction

August 8, 2014

Today David Stockman warned King World News that investors need to brace themselves for historic and worldwide financial destruction. KWN takes Stockman’s warnings very seriously because he is the man former President Reagan called on in 1981, during that crisis, to become Director of the Office of Management and Budget and help save the United States from collapse. Below is what Stockman, author of the website contracorner, had to say in his powerful interview.

Eric King: “David, the man who is counsel to big money around the world, Michael Belkin, just spoke with KWN and issued a dire warning for the financial markets. I just wondered how you see things at this point with the Dow recently tumbling and everything that is happening across the globe? What should we expect?”

Stockman: “Well, the watchword at this point is stay out of harm’s way. We are headed into a perfect storm of policy failures. This is not simply a failure by the Fed, which has inflated this massive bubble and painted itself into a corner with no clue how to get out, but we are also seeing an absolute failure of American world dominance....

“Our foreign policy is collapsing everywhere and yet the Washington war party keeps wanting to do more of the same. This confrontation with Putin is utterly out of hand and unnecessary. Now we have a trade war going that is going to ricochet through an already fragile European economy.

We hear today that Obama is considering going back into Iraq. What is he thinking? If you layer that on top of an already fragile financial bubble that is waiting to burst, I think we are in a zone of extreme danger. It’s hard to predict whether this will be the big, destructive bear market that inevitably has to come, or simply just another dip that encourages the robots and the trained seals on Wall Street to buy for another move higher. But one of these times we are going to have a big failure and I don’t think it’s too far down the road.

If you look at the stock market it has gone straight up for the last 62 months. If you look at the chart of the S&P 500 you can see that year after year the dips get shallower and more infrequent and that is not a healthy chart. That is a sign of a market that is not discounting the actual real world future, but simply trading the word clouds and the liquidity that is being injected by not only our central bank, but central banks around the world.

The difficulty is that I don’t believe this central bank ‘act’ can be kept up. We have had such tremendous expansions of balance sheets that even the central bankers are now beginning to second guess themselves, become divided among themselves, and begin to worry about how they get out of the corner they have painted themselves into.

So those are the factors that will ultimately cause a major collapse. It’s just a question of when the black swan comes flying in, or when the confidence in this whole central banking illusion finally breaks down in the markets.”

Eric King: “Michael Belkin also told KWN that the Fed doesn’t understand the leverage they have created. Their easy money policy and money printing funnels into all kinds of hedge funds in mid-town Manhattan and according to Belkin, ‘they leverage up the wazoo in all these weird, arcane derivatives.’ He warned a great deleveraging is coming that is going to feed on itself.”

Stockman: “Yes. I think the whole global financial system is booby trapped with both visible and hidden leverage. The problem with the Fed, and Yellen in particular, is that they are looking at a very narrow set of indicators. For instance, the nominal balance sheets of the big banks.

But the biggest source of leverage in the economy today is the whole area of structured finance and options trading of one type or another. It is inherently leveraged, and the market has been coiled up everywhere with that massive leverage. Well, on the way up this forces assets values to continue to inflate and rise. But on the way down, as these positions are liquidated, the adjustment can become very violent in the other direction.”

Eric King: “It sounds like we have a train wreck in front of us.”

Stockman: “Train wreck is a pretty good term to describe what is coming. But this train wreck isn’t simply going to hit a wall because this has been forming and accumulating and expanding for many years now, and yet it has simply been ignored, particularly by the financial markets which have ridden this bubble to these extreme and historic heights.

But when you take the balance sheet of the Fed from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion in less than 70 months, and when that pattern is replicated around the world, that is a train wreck in slow motion. The only issue is, when does it hit the wall? The answer to that question is it’s not very far down the road, and I can promise you that is when all hell is going to break loose.”

David A. Stockman: Former Dir. of the US Office of Management and Budget, Economic Policy Maker, Politician, Financier & Acclaimed Author of New York Times best-seller, “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.

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KWN

Gold, World War III & The End Of The Age Of Jobs & Travel

August 8, 2014

Today a legend spoke with King World News about how World War III is coming as well as the end of the age of jobs and travel. He also discussed what to expect in the gold market. Below is what legendary forecaster, James Dines, had to say in this remarkable interview.

Dines: “I’ve been warning on your program for years about the coming of World War III, and little wars are already springing up worldwide. The Middle East, for example, with the Islamic state having taken over a huge piece of Syria and Iraq. The next might be Baghdad or even Kurdistan....

“China has tensions with Japan. And Russia has been firing artillery shells from Russia into Ukraine, which is an act of war. There is strife in Sri Lanka again. Even Burma’s pacifist Buddhists are killing Muslims. Pakistan is invading Waziristan. I have to tell you the truth -- I see the beginning of World War III.

Putin’s next move will be to wait for winter cold to cut off Europe’s natural gas. Also, they will cut off uranium and palladium. And World War III will lead to the end of the age of travel. And by the way, that’s one of our longstanding predictions. People thought it was a crazy prediction, but I’ve been saying for years on your show, Eric, that this is the end of the age of travel. It’s already coming into view. So we recommend that you travel as soon as possible but only to safe places.”

Dines added: “How high will gold go? So far we are looking for a challenge of the previous all-time high, but eventually much higher because we believe gold mining is near a peak, forever. Gold has been searched for for centuries, with large new deposits found with diminishing frequency.

This also ties into inflation and deflation. As you know, I’ve been saying that the coming Great Deflation probably surfaced in 2008. But with the government trying to buoy prices, they are trying to get inflation (instead). This is shocking because the Fed used to hate inflation. President Gerald Ford had ‘Whip Inflation Now’ buttons he was passing out.

The Fed’s original mandate was to avoid unemployment, economic crises and inflation. The Fed has failed at all three and nobody has been fired yet. Overprinting money and creating debt is the real inflation which often results in higher prices. But I believe that going into debt to cure America’s debt problem is a quack Keynesian theory that will wind up in the garbage can of history.

And note the absence in the world around us of the word hyperinflation, except in the Dines Letter. And I think that’s another risk. But I believe the world has been in a deflation and that’s why this has not been a fragile recovery. It’s a deflationary depression, masked by historic overprinting of paper (money) to smother it -- hopefully to create an inflation. Which is why we’ve been predicting the coming end of the age of jobs, only now becoming visible.”

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ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

14 REASONS WHY THE U.S. ECONOMY’S BUBBLE OF FALSE PROSPERITY MAY BE ABOUT TO BURST

A major event just happened

by MICHAEL SNYDER

AUGUST 14, 2014

Did you know that a major event just happened in the financial markets that we have not seen since the financial crisis of 2008? If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, you probably didn’t even hear about it. Just prior to the last stock market crash, a massive amount of money was pulled out of junk bonds. Now it is happening again. In fact, as you will read about below, the market for high yield bonds just experienced “a 6-sigma event”. But this is not the only indication that the U.S. economy could be on the verge of very hard times. Retail sales are extremely disappointing, mortgage applications are at a 14 year low and growing geopolitical storms around the world have investors spooked. For a long time now, we have been enjoying a period of relative economic stability even though our underlying economic fundamentals continue to get even worse. Unfortunately, there are now a bunch of signs that this period of relative stability is about to end. The following are 14 reasons why the U.S. economy’s bubble of false prosperity may be about to burst…

#1 The U.S. junk bond market just experienced “a 6-sigma event” earlier this month. In other words, it is an event that is only supposed to have a chance of 1 in 500 million of happening. Billions of dollars are being pulled out of junk bonds right now, and that has some analysts wondering if a financial crash is right around the corner.

#2 The last time that we saw a junk bond rout of this magnitude was back during the financial crash of 2008. In fact, as the Telegraph recently explained, bonds usually crash before stocks do…

The credit market usually leads the equity market during turning points, as happened when credit markets cracked first in 2008.

Will the same thing happen this time around?

#3 Retail sales have missed expectations for three months in a row and we just had the worst reading since January.

#4 Things have gotten so bad that even Wal-Mart is really struggling. Same-store sales at Wal-Mart have declined for five quarters in a row and the outlook for the future is not particularly promising.

#5 The four week moving average for mortgage applications just hit a 14 year low. It is now even lower than it was during the worst moments of the financial crisis of 2008.

#6 The tech industry is supposed to be booming, but mass layoffs in the tech industry are actually 68 percent ahead of last year’s pace.

#7 According to the Federal Reserve, 40 percent of all households in the United States are currently showing signs of financial stress.

#8 The U.S. homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995.

#9 According to one survey, 76 percent of Americans do not have enough money saved to cover six months of expenses.

#10 Rumblings of a stock market correction have become so loud that even the mainstream media is reporting on it. For example, just check out this CNN headline from earlier this month: “Is a correction near? Wall Street on edge“.

#11 The civil war in Iraq is spiraling out of control, and Barack Obama has just announced that he is going to send 130 troops to the country in a “humanitarian” capacity. Iraq is the 7th largest oil producing nation on the entire planet, and if the flow of oil is disrupted that could have serious consequences.

#12 As a result of the conflict in Ukraine, the United States, Canada and the European Union have slapped sanctions on Russia. In return, Russia has slapped sanctions on them. Will this slowdown in global trade significantly harm the U.S. economy?

#13 The three day cease-fire between Hamas and Israel is about to end, and Hamas officials are saying that they are preparing for a “long battle“. If a resolution is not found soon, we could potentially see a full-blown regional war erupt in the Middle East.

#14 The number of Ebola deaths continues to grow at an exponential rate, and if the virus starts spreading inside the United States it has the potential to pretty much shut down our entire economy.

Meanwhile, things look even more dire in much of the rest of the globe.

For example, the economic slowdown has gotten so bad in some nations over in Europe that they are actually experiencing deflation…

Portugal has crashed into deep deflation and Italy’s inflation rate has fallen to zero as the eurozone flirts with recession, automatically pushing these countries further towards a debt compound spiral.

The slide comes amid signs of a deepening slowdown in the eurozone core, with even Germany flirting with possible recession. Germany’s ZEW index of investor confidence plunged from 27.1 to 8.6 in July, the sharpest fall since June 2012, during the European sovereign debt crisis. “The European Central Bank has to act now,” said Andrew Roberts, credit chief at RBS.

And in Japan, GDP just contracted at a 6.8 percent annual rate during the second quarter…

Japan’s economy suffered its worst contraction since 2011 in the second quarter as consumer spending on big items slumped in the wake of a sales tax rise.

Gross domestic product shrunk by an annualized 6.8% in the three months ended June, Japan’s Cabinet Office said Wednesday. The result was actually better than the 7% contraction expected by economists.

On a quarterly basis, Japan’s GDP dropped by 1.7% as business and housing investment declined. Japan’s economy last suffered a hit of this magnitude after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster.

There is no way that this bubble of false prosperity was going to last forever. It was never real to begin with. It was just based on a pyramid of debt and false promises. In fact, the condition of the global financial system is now far worse than it was just prior to the financial crisis of 2008.

Sadly, most people do not understand these things. Most people just assume that our leaders have fixed whatever caused the problems last time. And when the next crisis arrives, they will be totally blindsided by it.

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WND

PUTIN: 'THE PETRODOLLAR MUST DIE'

On mission to reduce global role of U.S. currency

Published: August 15, 2014

JEROME R. CORSI

Russian President Vladimir Putin

NEW YORK – Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again declared “the petrodollar must die,” leaving no doubt he is on a mission to reduce the importance of the U.S. dollar as a measure of international oil trade.

Reuters reported Thursday that Putin, in a visit to the newly annexed Crimea, said Russia should aim to sell its oil and gas for rubles globally, because the dollar monopoly in energy trade was damaging Russia’s economy.

“We should act carefully,” Reuters quoted Putin as saying. “At the moment we are trying to agree with some countries to trade in national currencies.”

At the same time, economics blog ZeroHedge.com is reporting Russia’s Gazprom has a lock-hold on Europe at least until 2016, the earliest date commercial shale gas production in Europe will be of sufficient quantity to make an impact on the continent’s energy market.

According to Treasury Department records, Russia in March sold off one-third of its U.S. Treasury debt holdings. Russia reduced its U.S. Treasury holdings from $153 billion in March 2013 to $100.4 billion in March 2014. The most recent numbers remain at a reduced level, with Russia holding $111.4 billion in U.S. treasuries in May 2014, compared to $143.4 billion in May 2013.

The Russian sell-off of U.S. Treasury debt has been widely interpreted as reflecting Moscow’s adverse reactions to economic sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia as punishment for taking over Crimea and threatening military involvement in Ukraine.

The Voice of Russia reported May 13 that Russia’s Ministry of Finance is ready to give a green light to a plan to radically increase the role of the Russian ruble in export operations while reducing the share of Russia’s dollar-denominated transactions.

The Voice of Russia report detailed a “de-dollarization meeting” chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov involving top level experts from Russia’s energy sector, banks and governmental agencies. The leaders were summoned to find a way to increase Russia’s ruble-denominated dollars to retaliate against the recently imposed U.S. economic sanctions.

In May, China agreed to buy $400 billion of Russian-produced natural gas over 30-years, valued in domestic currencies, in what was touted as Gazprom’s biggest contract ever.

In August, Russia signed a historic deal with Iran to purchase $20 billion of oil in rubles, bypassing Western sanctions against Iran while hastening the petrodollar’s decline.

Economist Jim Rickards, has predictedthe decline of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency in international trade will very likely result in an increase in the price of oil.

“There is also a newly emerging alliance among Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and Russia,” Rickards pointed out in a recent interview.

“The new alignment will have no particular use for U.S. dollars and no reason to support them. This turn of events marks the beginning of a significant diminution in the role of the dollar in the international monetary system. Since the price of gold is, in large part, simply the inverse of the value of a dollar, the decline of the dollar will presage a major increase in the dollar price of gold.”

Rickards, the author of “Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis”, published in 2012, and “The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of International Monetary System”, in 2014, has been predicting the collapse of the dollar as the world’s international reserve currency.

“China has 3 trillion dollars [in reserve holdings], but they are buying gold as fast as they can,” Rickards told RT.com in May. “China worries that the U.S. is going to devalue the dollar through inflation so they want to have a hedge if the dollar goes down, so the gold will go up.”

Forbes reported in March that China replaced India as the world’s largest consumer of gold.

China’s holdings of U.S. Treasury debt has declined from $1.39 billion in May 2013 to approximately $1.27 billion in May 2014.

Meanwhile, gold was trading at about $1,313 an ounce Thursday.

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RT

Russia’s food embargo making EU squeal even louder

Published time: August 14, 2014 09:53

Edited time: August 14, 2014 10:56

Austria is warning of catastrophic falling prices, and the Netherlands is saying losses could be triple initial estimates. A third of Lithuanian milk producers say they are facing problems.

The wholesale price of a kilogram of fruit or vegetables could halve due to excess supply, the Austrian newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten cites Rupert Gsols, a federal coordinator of the Austrian Union of Market Gardeners.

There is a bumper crop of European apples in 2014; around 12 million tons against the normal 10-11 million tons. About 370,000 tons are harvested in Poland.

The economic damage to the Netherlands from the Russian boycott could be triple the original estimate and reach €1.5 billion, Dutch News cites Hans de Boer, the chief of VNO-NCW Dutch employers' organization.

“That calculation did not take into account the Dutch dealers who operate from Eastern Europe,” de Boer said.

In Lithuania, Russian countermeasures to Western sanctions are hitting milk producers the hardest, as about a third of firms face problems in finding alternative markets, RIA cites Jurate Dovydeniene, the head of the Lithuanian Association of Agricultural Cooperatives.

Pieno Zvaigzdes, one of Lithuania’s five largest milk processing plants, suspended buying milk from farmers in the middle of month.

Even those who didn’t supply the products to Russia will suffer, Andriejus Stancikas the head of the Agricultural Chamber of Lithuania said.

“The situation became too dangerous especially for the agricultural sector, as the blockade is imposed not only on Lithuania, but to all the European Union. It would be difficult to reorient the deliveries to the West, these markets will be filled with their own production,” Stanchikas explained

Even though Russia was a risky market, it was one of the most lucrative and consumers highly appreciated Lithuanian products, he added.

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WOLF STREET

Goal of Booming ‘Internet of Things’: Monitoring, Sensing, Remote Control – Factory Workers First, You Next

by Wolf Richter • August 6, 2014

The “Internet of Things” is the next Big Thing. A universe of devices connected to data centers: your fridge, toaster, alarm clock, garage-door opener, pickup truck, self-driving car, thermostat, “intelligent toilet,” and other doodads.

They’re equipped with a computer chip, other hardware, sensors, and software that can pick up all sorts of data and transmit it via Wi-Fi, cellular, Bluetooth, ZigBee, RFID, and other wireless technologies to hub devices, such as smartphones or PCs, which then pass it on via the Internet to a trusty data center where the data will be used and monetized by one or more corporations. And as we now know, various government agencies can get access to this data in a snap.

You’ll be able to close your garage door with your smartphone, check how many times your kids opened the fridge and what they took out, and you’ll be able to chart it. In turn, your fridge and your pantry will put your grocery list together, transmit it to your smartphone while you’re shopping, or directly to the company that delivers your groceries. Your car remains in constant contact with a data center, and if it stalls on the highway, the data stream it sends back notifies the data center, and help is on the way. If you’re speeding, it might send the data directly to the proper law enforcement agency so that when you get home, you already have the speeding ticket in the email. Your thermostat senses what’s going on in your home, learns the details, the comings and goings, if anyone is at home, and who, and it also adjusts the temperature.

OK, got it. This is for your own benefit.

Google is at the forefront. It acquired Nest, whose thermostat learns the details of your home and its occupants. It invented Google Glass. It is experimenting with self-driving cars. The possibilities are endless. And based on Google Glass, work is being done to link factory workers to the Internet of Things to make them more efficient. As Automotive News breathlessly reported:

New factory technology is in the pipeline that will turn workers’ clothing into data-emitting devices for plant management. The benefit? Engineers will be able to constantly monitor the air temperature, humidity, and working conditions of a factory process, and track employee motions for ergonomics research and safety concerns.

Internet-connected wearable devices will transmit data automatically, which allows the factory’s computer system to manage and adjust, for example, tooling and equipment on the fly without human intervention, explained Jason Prater, VP of development at Plex Systems, whose Manufacturing Cloud, according to its website, runs the factory operations of “nearly 400 companies.”

Prater was speaking at the 2014 Management Briefing Seminars on Monday. Plex, in collaboration with an automotive metal-stamping supplier, is developing a system centered on Google Glass that workers would wear on the job. These devices would transmit a plethora of data, Prater said, including workers’ movements to maximize assembly-line efficiency and such things as body temperature to monitor their health.

Nothing will remain unexamined.

It’s big business. How big? ABI Research estimates that over 30 billion devices will be connected to the Internet of Things by 2020; Gartner puts the number at 26 billion – not including 7.3 billion PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

That’s a lot of internet-connected things, considering that there are “only” a little over 7 billion people on this planet, including those who recalcitrantly remain beyond the reach of the Internet of Things, or even electricity.

Component costs will drop to less than $1 per device, Gartner predicts, which “opens up the possibility of connecting just about anything, from the very simple to the very complex, to offer remote control, monitoring, and sensing.”

As the Internet of Things spreads across every facet of your work, home, and private life, Gartner expects “the variety of devices offered to explode.” It forecasts that the “economic value-add” will reach $1.9 trillion in 2020. It expects the leaders to be manufacturing, healthcare – maybe you won’t even have to bother going to the doctor anymore – and insurance.

These devices still have novelty status. So an uproar ensued when Nest announced that it would share with Google, its new owner, as well as with third-party services the user data its thermostats have collected, after having promised up and down not to share the data. But as more of these devices enter our lives, such data-sharing will be accepted as the norm, similar to the acceptance of data-sharing by smartphones.

“We take your privacy seriously,” Nest says in its Privacy Statement before laying out what information it collects, “including Personally Identifiable Information (i.e., data that can be reasonably linked to a specific individual or household)….” And it will share this information, very reassuringly, with third parties “only when we think they will provide you with a welcome additional service.”

These hapless factory workers are trailblazers.

“The next wave is wearable technology, like Google Glass, smart watches, and smart vests,” Prater of Plex systems explained. The advantage of these devices is that they “will allow you to continue using your hands without having to input or look for data.” The data will be sent to the factory’s computer where every movement and drop of sweat will be recorded and analyzed. In Gartner’s words: monitoring, sensing, and remote control of people.

“Today, decisions are made instantaneously,” Prater said. “We can’t wait to hear about things after the fact.” And then the industry insider too had an intriguing forecast: “Turning people into essentially walking sensors is going to be the future.”

And how secure are these devices that make you part of the Internet of Things? You don’t need to break a code; you don’t need to capture a server. “Hardcore hackers wouldn’t even bother with it,” said one of the hackers. “They’d find access too easy.”

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Fukushima Diary

Photo : Reactor 3 on 3/16/2011

NHK admitted pieces of fuel rods and reactor vessels blasted to at least Ibaraki to contain Uranium & Zirconiu

In the early morning news flash of 8/9/2014, NHK announced that pieces of nuclear fuel, fuel rods, reactor pressure vessels and the internal structure were blasted to at least 130km away from Fukushima nuclear plant.

It was 2μm diameter particle. The ball-looking shape proves it was molten in high temperature and quickly cooled down. The particles contain Uranium, Zirconium etc, which are the same material as nuclear fuel and the structure inside the vessels. These were collected from 3/14 ~ 3/15/2011 in Tsukuba city Ibaraki prefecture by the study group of Science Univ. of Tokyo.

The reason why NHK suddenly started reporting about this fact is not clear. It has been already 3 years and 5 months, which is probably too late to escape. There is a possibility that NHK announces the actual contamination situation in the area closer to Tokyo when people pay much less attention to Fukushima accident.

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Natural News

Organic food's immense potential to heal the sick

Thursday, August 14, 2014 by: S. D. Wells

(NaturalNews) Let's face it, many Americans eat like pigs. They pull up to drive-through windows and they sit down at pancake houses, and they order up a completely GMO meal, full of gluten, refined sugar, MSG, animal fat and sometimes even artificial sweeteners. They wash it all down and repeat the cycle within hours, sometimes three times in one day. Why? Don't they know? Maybe they don't care, but they will, later.

Time stands still when you're sick. The world seems to stop spinning when you're laid out in a hospital bed, with an I.V. stuck in your arm, waiting for a "diagnosis."

Time just seems to stop, when you can't work, you can't enjoy anything and you're miserable from some illness, disease or disorder that America seems to feed rather than try to prevent. So who's feeding who? Are the corporations feeding the humans toxic food, or are the humans using their hands on their own free will to shove sickness into their mouths?

Believe it or not, organic food is a $15,000,000,000 industry yearly now. That's 15 billion, not million, by the way. Are all THOSE people feeding themselves "life" -- a healthy life that's a choice to make, every meal, every snack, every drink and every personal care product? Of course it is. That's what brings us to healing the sick with organic food, since your cells are all brand new about every three months. You could make that CHANGE in one season, my friend.

Inflammation Nation

The root cause of most pain, illness, headaches and other chronic sicknesses is simply inflammation. Hundreds of millions of people suffer from inflammation daily, because they do many of the following: Ingest fluoridated tap water, take pharmaceutical medications, take OTC (over the counter) medications, eat genetically modified foods (GMO), eat gluten, get flu shots, drink sodas and diet sodas, chew gum or candy laced with artificial sweeteners, apply topical lotions loaded with chemicals, eat bleached-white foods, eat conventional hormone-laden meat and drink conventional hormone-laden milk. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and the damage becomes exponential, as cells mutate and turn and attack living healthy tissue. That's cancer.

Even the lack of clean whole food and clean spring water inflames the entire body, the tissues, the muscles and the brain. The heart is overworked and under-delivers the goods (nutrients), because there are none. They've been wiped out by pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, algaecides and toxic fertilizers used to grow toxic food for toxic humans in need of... wait for it... Obamacare!

Your cells are in a constant battle. They battle for oxygen and nutrition. Those are your good cells. Your bad cells are in a constant search -- for sugar and carcinogens. Which cells will you feed with your next meal, and the one after that, and after that? Which cells will you feed with your next drink or snack, the healthy cells or the cancer cells? Will you "feed the beast" that will destroy you once it has all the power, or will you feed the organic being that you were born to be, the machine with a heart and a brain?

Inside your body is a universe of enzymes, flora and healthy organisms that fuel the fire of thinking and doing and evolving. Will you put that fire out with processed junk science? Cancer cells can not live when your cells have plenty of oxygen. Win the daily battle. Win the long-term war. You are on the battlefield right now, and your hands and brain are your weapons. Use them. Do not pick up another piece of food that contains toxins. Heal your body and your mind, starting right now.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com

http://www.theorganicprepper.ca

http://www.organicauthority.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.joybauer.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

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Until next week...keep on believing
Almondtree Productions

“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”
(1 Corinthians 6:19)