“For
all of The Written Law is fulfilled in one saying, by this: 'You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”
(Galatians
5:14 Aramaic Bible in Plain English)
The Written Law Is Fulfilled
***
CharismaMagazine
Would Jesus' Apostles Even Recognize the Modern American Church?
7:00AM EDT 5/2/2014 MARCUS YOARS
By today’s standards in the American church, Jesus wasn’t cut out to be a pastor, nor would His ministry be highlighted as a model for church planters. Consider these facts:
Jesus had the greatest preaching, teaching and healing ministry in history. Thousands came to hear Him, followed His every move and lined the streets to get a glimpse of Him or simply touch Him. Yet amid His rock-star popularity, He intentionally offended religious leaders, challenged potential mega-donors and weeded out casual followers with tough teachings. Not exactly the textbook strategy you’d find today to grow your church, much less your Facebook likes and Twitter followers.
After Jesus spent three and a half years ministering to thousands, His church consisted of only 120 disciples gathered in the upper room. And even that was a low turnout, considering He had appeared to more than 500 people after His resurrection (1 Cor. 15:6).
But we know the rest of the story: how the 120 quickly became 3,120 and grew daily to where even unbelievers credited Jesus’ followers as those “who have turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). The truth is, we know that Jesus’ divine church-growth tactics surpass all others—with the proof being a global church that, 2,000 years later, refuses to die while it works to fulfill His Great Commission.
Why, then, do we in the 21st-century American church focus on all the elements that Jesus didn’t? He focused on training and equipping 12 disciples; we focus on growing our crowds and spheres of influence, regardless of whether those people follow Jesus. He preached an uncompromising message of truth; we sugarcoat the gospel until we’re saccharine-high on deception. He walked among His enemies in love; we ostracize our enemies by blasting them for all their sins.
Indeed, most of the U.S. church is enamored with size over substance and microwave growth over true reproduction. Research shows that while 235 million people call themselves Christians, only 40 percent of those meet regularly with fellow believers and only a fourth (at most) read the Bible on a regular basis. It’s time we discovered the marks of the real church, measured by Jesus’ standards rather than our own trendy metrics. So what are those elements? Here are just a few.
1) Love. Jesus defined a premier characteristic of His church in John 13:35: “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” If we can’t even love fellow believers—if we skewer each other over theological differences and cultural preferences—how can we expect the world to want what we have? Transforming the world with God’s love starts right where we are, on the home front, as we learn to love each other as Christ loved us.
2) Prayer. Jesus was constantly communicating with the Father, listening for His thoughts and seeing where He was already moving. Luke’s Gospel shows that little happened in Christ’s life without Him first praying. Why, then, do most church gatherings today focus so little on prayer? In trying to be culturally relevant and seeker-sensitive, we’ve conveyed that this essentiality of our faith—both individually and corporately—is secondary. That can’t be if we want to mimic Jesus.
3) Persecution. We in the West equate religious freedom and the lack of persecution with blessing. Yet when you look for the most powerful churches in the world, where the Spirit moves freely and in fullness, you’ll always find persecution. It’s time we wake up and realize that persecution galvanizes and unifies the body of Christ like few other pressures. Remember, Jesus promised persecution to those who truly follow Him (Matt. 5:11-12; John 15:20). When was the last time you saw this promise fulfilled in your own life or church?
4) Power. Jesus also promised that His followers would do greater works than He did (John 14:12)—a promise sealed by the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower us. Wherever the early apostles and church went, the miraculous followed. Though there have been seasons of Holy Spirit revival in our nation, even charismatic churches today are de-emphasizing such things as praying for the sick, demonic deliverance or the prophetic. Making room for the Spirit’s supernatural movement isn’t an option; it’s the mark of those who truly follow Christ.
Charisma has highlighted eight of the biggest issues today’s American church faces. Some are core to our nation’s culture wars; others are more exclusive to believers. Regardless, all require the church to stand up as representations of Christ and be the solution—just as Jesus modeled.
***
What To Make Of It?
As shown in the previous entries, it is consistent with the Bible to believe in telepathic communication, especially from spirit entities.
The point here is not to equate parapsychological cases to biblical prophecy and miracles, but rather to draw some parallels and explore Watchman Nee’s hypothesis that all human beings have latent paranormal soul power. Radin’s presentiment research suggests that nearly all of us have short-term premonitions on a regular basis whether we know it or not. Might this be the latent power of the soul?
I am dismayed that pantheistic monism is the dominant religious idea associated with parapsychology, and this is probably due to a lack of thoughtful interaction by Christian theologians more than any inherent consistency with Eastern thought. Reality is stranger than commonly assumed, and Christians should be eager to acknowledge it. Precognition and psi are words associated with new age occultism but beyond word play the phenomena associated with them is often consistent with the Supernatural Worldview presented in the Bible. From floating axe heads (2 Kings 6:6) to walking on water (Matthew 14:29), the Bible is chock full of weird anomalies and miracles.
Unfortunately, many Christian apologists tend to paint with broad brush strokes, labeling all paranormal phenomena to be occult. Even though the Bible is full of precognitive dreams, an academic apologetics source defines precognition as “the occult belief that one can possess the power to peer into the future.”[xxvi] While caution is in order, there is an all-too-common tendency to demonize what one does not understand. I find it intriguing that Watchman Nee anticipated parapsychological research, writing, “To the practitioners of this science these many miraculous phenomena are quite natural. To us believers they are even more natural. For we know they are merely the consequences of the releasing of the latent power of the soul.”[xxvii]
As Christians, we also need to recognize that most of the subjects in these cases and experiments are just regular folks. They are not practicing the occult arts or worshipping the devil, yet they seem to have accurate precognitive dreams and premonitions that anticipate the future. It seems that this sort of thing really is much more common than our Western scientific paradigm has led us to believe. It also lends credence to Nee’s idea of latent soul power and, as a result, to his end-times warning. Because Christianity neglects the subject, we have given New Age occultist and ultimately Satan the opportunity to define supernaturalism for a world hungry for answers.
[xxvi] Larry A. Nichols, George A. Mather, and Alvin J. Schmidt, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cults, Sects, and World Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006) 434.
[xxvii] Nee, 20.
[xx] Chardin’s system was explained in chapter 19 of Cris Putnam and Thomas Horn, Exo-Vaticana: Petrus Romanus, Project L.u.c.i.f.e.r. and the Vatican’s Astonishing Plan for the Arrival of an Alien Savior (Crane, MO: Defender, 2013) 521.
Excerpted from: THE SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW
Examining Paranormal, PSI, and the ApocalypticPosted: May 4, 2014 8:00 am Eastern
by Cris Putnam
PART 11 - The Source Who Transcends Time
Mediums, Ghosts, Familiar Spirits, and the Supernatural Worldview
Scripture presents at least one human ghost in absolutely objective terms: the apparition of Samuel that appeared to King Saul. The book of 1 Samuel is set in Israel during the transition from the formative period of the judges to the renowned Davidic monarchy. Beginning with Samuel’s birth, the book describes his role as a judge and prophet over Israel. Although it may not be obvious from some passages, God did not prefer Israel to have a human king. In Deuteronomy 33:5, the Lord had become Israel’s king. He preferred that the nation remain a theocracy, but due to disobedience, it wasn’t practical. God’s desire seems clear when He lamented to Samuel, “For they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7b). Israel’s desire for a human king was a rejection of God.
When the people pleaded for a king, the Lord instructed Samuel to anoint Saul as Israel’s first king. Unfortunately, human sin has a way of making something that seems good an obstacle to God’s best. So it is not too surprising that while King Saul started well, he ended poorly. By the time we reach chapter 28’s famous account of the medium at Endor, Saul had been rejected by God, having painted himself into a corner with his jealousy of David, whom God had chosen as Saul’s replacement. If that wasn’t enough, the Philistine armies were circling like vultures.
Out of God’s favor and facing overwhelming odds from the approaching Philistine invasion, Saul decided that the only one who could guide him was the prophet who had originally crowned him king: Samuel. However, Saul had a small problem in that Samuel was deceased (1 Samuel 28:3). Contacting the dead was forbidden by God, and Saul himself had purged the mediums and necromancers from the land. Desperate, Saul utilized the underground market for the black arts: “So Saul said to his servants, ‘Search for me a woman who is a medium so that I may go to her and inquire of her.’ His servants said to him, ‘Look there is a woman who is a medium in Endor’” (1 Samuel 28:7, LEB).
A strictly literal rendering of the Hebrew text is much more informative than “woman who is a medium.” The term “medium” in English likely brings to mind for most readers a swindling gypsy preying on the bereaved, or perhaps the Long Island Medium or John Edward of recent television fame for other readers. However, this three-thousand-year-old narrative traverses a vast historical, cultural, and linguistic chasm between the reader’s context and the author’s. The ancient Israelites had a deeply Supernatural Worldview. They didn’t doubt that real mediums could contact the spirit realm.
Saul had purged all the mediums from the land because the Mosaic Law ascribed the death penalty to mediums and necromancers. Interestingly, the Hebrew text preserves a distinction lost in most English translations. The English Standard Version gives the impression that the text is exclusively addressing human beings who engage in these forbidden activities: “A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:27).
However, in the original language, the terms “medium” and “necromancer” don’t refer only to humans, but also to humans associated with spirits. The more accurate rendering of the Hebrew found in Lexham English Bible is helpful: “And a man or a woman, if a spirit of the dead [ob] or a spirit of divination [yiddeoni] is in them, they shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones—their blood is on them” (Leviticus 20:27, LEB).
This translation is a huge improvement toward understanding what being a medium in the Old Testament entailed. Where most English Bibles read “who is a medium,” the Hebrew transliterated “ki yiyeh b a-hem ’ob” literally means, “if is in them a spirit of the dead.” The far-reaching implications will be explored in the next entry. Paramount, the text disallows an easy escape. Bible believers cannot remain consistent while relegating mediums and spirits to the domain of superstitious nonsense. God is delivering His law—the covenant stipulations for Israel—for a practice carrying the death penalty. This is very serious business.
God would not institute law for offenses that could not be committed. Why would He prescribe such a harsh punishment for the impossible? If one takes God seriously, then familiar spirits are real and communicating with the dead is possible. The ill-advised alternative is that God trades in absurdity. Unfortunately, well-meaning translators have insulated English Bible readers from the reality of God’s Word. To further illustrate this point, examine a passage from 2 Kings concerning King Manasseh, who was infamous for his deep entanglement in black magic, in two modern translations, the English Standard Version and Today’s New International Version:
“And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums [ob] and with necromancers [yiddeoni]. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger” (2 Kings 21:6, ESV).
“He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums [’ob] and spiritists [yiddeoni]. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger” (2 Kings 21:6, TNIV).
These translations are somewhat sanitized because it is far more likely that original author meant for the reader to understand that he “dealt with ghosts and familiar spirits,” not merely human mediums and human necromancers/spiritists. A medium is “someone with a spirit of the dead,” but this 2 Kings passage only uses the term ’ob. It implies that Manasseh interacted with actual spirits for divination. Flavius Josephus explained the Jewish belief that, “For this sort of necromantic women that bring up the souls of the dead, do by them foretell future events to such as desire them.”[xvi] Later, the King James translators rendered it “dealt with familiar spirits and wizards,” reflecting a more Supernatural Worldview than some modern versions.
[xvi]Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996, c1987), Ant. 6.330.
Excerpted from: THE SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW
Examining Paranormal, PSI, and the ApocalypticPosted: May 8, 2014 8:00 am Eastern
by Cris Putnam
PART 12 - Are Some Ghosts Good?
***
Occult evolution: Antediluvian, Babylonian, and modern expressions
By Linda Kimball
April 30, 2014
In "The attack on biblical creation in UK schools continues," Phil Robinson reports that in the dechristianized U.K. unrelenting attacks against special creation (Genesis account) display a level of aggressive intolerance that is hard to stomach, coming as they do from self-proclaimed scientifically-enlightened 'voices of reason.' Some schools have already banned the teaching of special creation in favor of evolutionary science. (creation.com, Mar. 9, 2014)
Other shrill 'voices of reason' go so far as to connect special creation to mental illness and child abuse. During a radio interview in Australia famous physicist and atheist propagandist Lawrence Krauss said that while in the United States recently, he stated that "teaching creationism is child abuse and I think it is." (Prayer News, a publication of Creation Ministries, Apr. 2014)
Throughout the West and here in America a slash-and-burn operation conducted against the Genesis account, particularly its' literal and historical elements, is justified by the false idea that evolution is science, thus intolerance of special creation is often presented as a 'science versus religion' or 'faith versus reason' issue. So successful has this war of attrition been that younger generations of Westerners and Americans have been disconnected from both Western history and its' founding Christian-based worldview, thus like seedlings recently popped up from the soil are unconcerned that special creation, where the ultimate source of life, being and unalienable rights are found, has nearly been displaced by anti-human pagan conceptions positing billions of years of evolutionary transformism from lower kinds of things to higher and higher kinds of things – even non-human kinds of things:
"For us, the best way to create new ('artificial') life forms and intelligence is to allow them to emerge through evolution, as nature does, only in much shorter timeframes and with much greater efficiency and variety."
"For conscious evolution to be successful, we need to observe and understand the actual workings of nature, in all its dynamism, to the point of profound reverence, or 'worship.' This is what I call extreme nature-worshipping... From the perspective of extreme nature-worshipping, the real significance of Darwin's evolutionary theory is not that humans descended from lower species, but that we can continue to evolve." (Cosmic Beings: Transhumanist Deism in Ted Chu's Cosmic View, Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technology, Giulio Prisco)
The vicious name-calling, seething resentment toward and censorship of the six day creation account and of all who profess and teach it should raise the eyebrows of any rational thinking person. If evolution really is a fact of science then why the irrational name-calling, ridicule, scorn, shunning, resentment, intolerance and demonization?
The answer is that the zealous worshipper of evolution is the Spirit of our age that emerged out of the Renaissance whose answer to the Lord Jesus Christ is the Cross (crucify Him) and whose fulfillment will be the Wicked One. (2 Thess. 2:1-8)
From the Renaissance to our own time the Spirit has been transgressing, blaspheming, and departing that it need not obey His voice. Like a dog returning to its own vomit, the Spirit has returned to its first love: the cult of demons in the Godless universe of matter, psychic energy, and animated forces where time is changed, past history rendered meaningless, and the liberated Spirit imbibes the cup of wrath, an intoxicating mixture of Babylonian Mysteries, incantations, spiritism, Gnosticism, sorcery, witchcraft, Hermetic magic, Kabbalah, reincarnation, astrology, and other devilish occult traditions.
The Book of Revelation pinpoints Babylon as the post-flood center of an occult pagan Mystery religion based on advaitic monism, science of magic transformism, exalted priesthood, gnosis, secret initiations, psychic-powers, familiar spirits, androgyny, sexual perversions, and other evils.
Babylon embraced the Great Lie. Its inhabitants claimed the title, "I AM." The root source of this evil religion and its occult power was the Great Dragon himself....Lucifer:
".... the Great Lie (is) the foundation stone of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, the Kabala, the Greek Hermetic, Eleusinian and Gnostic beliefs, Neo-Platonism, all the occult creeds from Theosophy and the Masonic orders to the Rosicrucian's (and) the New Age movement. The Great Lie is...the belief that man is God, that his true identity is the immortal self...that as God, he will never die (and) Sin and depravity are...illusions since this inner divinity is at man's core." (The Great Lie, Tal Brooke, SCP Journal, Vol. 29:2-29:3, 2005)
Though the Spirit of our age claims the title "I AM" it nevertheless follows after and falls down before other fascinating men: theoreticians of evolutionary science, nature philosophy and evolutionary pagan theology. These charismatic Pied Pipers are possessed of surpassing powers of persuasion and inflexible determination of will to which the Spirit assigns more honor than to anything else.
The Spirit has usurped the throne of the Word Incarnate (John 1:1) because He is not good, not just or benevolent but a devil, an evil Tyrant Who, with His infliction of suffering in this life and eternal punishment in the next must be deposed. (Psalm 2:2-3)
Blaming our Lord for their own sins the proud, self-righteous Spirit of rebellion, hypocrisy and negation says to Him, "...you are not my father." My father is the god of forces, therefore:
"I am I, I come out of myself, and in choice and action I make myself." (Daniel Bell, quoted by Herbert Schlossberg in "Idols for Destruction," p. 43)
In the final analysis, the Spirit of our age is the "striving human will" seeking desperately to launch itself,
"...into minor godhood in an evolving cosmos through the mechanisms of directed spiritual evolution, spiritualized science and spirit contact." The 'new' spirituality now presents itself as the "rightful replacement for the Revealed Word (and) proclaims its spiritual liberation from the worldview that informs Christianity and its freedom from (the) personal and wholly other God. But this new way of self-salvation (is) little more than the refurbishing of an ancient spiritual mistake." (The Making of the New Spirituality: the Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James A. Herrick, p. 279)
"As it was in the days of Noah..."
The ominous signs of this age are obvious, said the English theologian G.H. Pember (1837-1910) in his book, "The Antichrist Babylon and the Coming Kingdom." Just as it was during the pre-flood generations, open intercourse with demons (spiritism) is now common throughout Christendom and even in Russia. In France it is the national pastime. The apostles of the powers of darkness are everywhere proclaiming their scientific and evolutionary theories demonstrating that the world created itself and had no need of a Creator (p. 60) while the miseries which have resulted from sin,
"....are blasphemously charged upon the Almighty, Who so loved the world as to give His son for it (but is now) impiously forbidden to curb and discipline the rebels who owe their existence to the breath of His mouth. And when we see such men as John Stuart Mill (and) John Morley, the late Chief Secretary for Ireland...guiding their fellows to defiant insubordination, we can scarcely wonder that Bradlaugh...said, 'This world might have been happy, had not the shadow of God fallen upon it." (pp. 35-36, 1888)
Rise of Occult Evolutionary Science
In the impeccably researched, "The Making of the New Spirituality," James Herrick observes that the scientific tradition in Renaissance Europe developed around three basic approaches: the organic, the mechanical and the magical. It was magical and/or occult science that provided the greatest impetus for scientific exploration. (p. 45)
C.S. Lewis underscores this point in "The Abolition of Man:"
"You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak."
In "God and the Knowledge of Reality," the Catholic philosopher and historian, Thomas Molnar (1921–2010), reveals the 'temper of that age' as a spirit of rebellion against the Christian God, and this is why occult science and evolutionary thinking provided the greatest impetus. During the Renaissance, certain Christian theologians, mystics and scholars such as Emanuel Swedenborg had discovered Hermetic magic and occult Jewish Kabbalah texts which they studied and translated resulting in Hermetic Kabbalah. Then like Pico della Mirandola, they argued that occult hermetic science – the divine technology or Magic Way of reaching divine status and powers through ritual procedures (spiritual evolution) is the best proof of the divinity of Christ. In other words said Molnar,
".....by the time of the Renaissance the esoteric texts of the first centuries A.D. had acquired in scholarly and humanist circles an unparalleled prestige, confronting as equals the texts held sacred by the church. In Pico's estimation, 'nulla est scientia que nos magis certificet de divinitate Christ quam magia et Cabala' (there is no science that would prove for us Christ's divinity better than magic and the Cabala.)" (pp. 78-79)
Hermetic magic and Jewish Kabbalah are ancient Mystery Religion traditions, as affirmed by G. H. Pember in his classic work, "Earth's Earliest Ages." Pember thoroughly examines the role of fallen angels in connection with the magic (occult transformism) they taught to pre-flood generations and compares them to the explosion of spiritism (open intercourse with evil spirits), astrology, the Mysteries and other occult traditions sweeping over Christendom.
Pember writes that the Mysteries are no longer veiled in mystery but boldly presented by the powerful occult brotherhood that emerged out of the Renaissance as the fruit of modern science, especially evolutionary philosophy, which the brotherhood assert was included in the instructions given,
"...to the initiates of the Hermetic, Orphic, Eleusinian, and Cabbalistic mysteries, and were familiar to Chaldean Magi, Egyptian Priests, Hindu Occultists, Essenes, Therapeutae Gnostics, and Theurgic Neo-Platonists." (Pember, pp.243-244)
Hermetic Magic
Hermeticism is an ancient Egyptian secret magic tradition based on a set of fourteen books known
collectively as the Corpus Hermeticum attributed to a mysterious figure known as Hermes Trismegistus. Implied in Hermeticism is an evolutionary process of magical transformism (spiritual evolution) moving from one kind of lower thing to another kind of higher thing:
"Human beings are themselves the product of a long spiritual evolutionary process that moves from 'creeping things' to fish, mammals, birds and then people. Humans can – through occult knowledge and extraordinary ability – continue this evolutionary process and become daemons, then gods, and finally planets or stars." (The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James A. Herrick, p. 40)
With respect to Hermes identity, researchers of antiquity are divided. Some believe Hermes was a mythical figure. Others argue he was Ham or his son Cush. The historian Samuel Shuckford argues that Hermes was Pathrusim, king of Thebais, the son of Mizraim, the son of Ham. His Egyptian name was Tyoth or Thoth. (The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected, 1808)
In any case, it was Thoth-Hermes who instructed his brothers in the arts and science magic of alchemy or transmutation of a lower kind of thing into a higher kind of thing. For example, after a lengthy transformative process out of the eternally existing divine abyss (primordial matter), the self-created Sun-God Ra boasted that he "came into being from primordial matter." He made all the forms under which he "appeared by means of the god-soul" which he raised up out of Nu, primordial matter. (The Long War Against God, Dr. Henry Morris, p. 243)
Occult Kabalah
"The Kabalah is the key to the occult sciences; and the Gnostics were born of the Kabalists." (Occult Mason Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 626)
Like its' Hermetic counterpart, Kabala implies a process of evolutionary transformism:
"...the older Enoch book (gives) a fuller insight into the "Merkabah" and "Bereshit" lore of the ancients than the "Hekalot," which present but fragments, while the central figure of the Cabala, Meṭaṭron-Enoch, is seen in ch. lxx.-lxxi. in a process of transformation." (Cabala, Jewish Encyclopedia)
According to Helena Blavatsky, one of the key architects of Luciferian New Age pantheism, Kabalah derived,
".... from the older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Kabalistic." (Blavatsky, Theosophical Glossary, p. 168)
The godless cosmogony of Kabala teaches the gradual condensation or evolutionary progression of a primal substance into visible matter. This is a fundamental,
"... doctrine of the Cabala (and) is the ancient Semitic conception of the 'primal ocean,' known to the Babylonians as 'Apsu' and called by the Gnostics âύèïò = (Anz, 'Die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnostizismus,' p. 98).
The Chaldean occult science and pagan Mystery Religion was embraced by apostate Jews during their captivity in Babylon and delivered to subsequent generations of initiates by word of mouth. According to Blavatsky, these initiates of the Chaldean tradition in the centuries before Christ were known as Tanaim:
"The kabalist is a student of 'secret science,' one who interprets the hidden meaning of the
Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala... The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era... This secret doctrine is identical with the Persian wisdom, or 'magic'." (Ibid. p.167)
The Essenes were also associated with the Kabala. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the cabalistic practices of the Essenes, which were Judaized elements of Eastern mystical traditions:
"So, too, were the Essenes familiar with the idea of the journey to heaven...and they were also masters of angelology. The practice of magic and incantation, the angelology and demonology, were borrowed from Babylonia, Persia, and Egypt; but these foreign elements were Judaized in the process, and took the form of the mystical adoration of the name of God and of speculations regarding the mysterious power of the Hebrew alphabet ..., 'the name of God creates and destroys worlds,' to become, finally, foundations of the philosophy of the 'Sefer Yetzirah." (Cabala, Jewish Encyclopedia)
According to Blavatsky the Essenes were pagan priests of the Greek goddess, Diana of Ephesus, where the Tanaim had established a college for instruction in the Chaldean mystery religion:
"Essenes... had many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also denominated... It was at Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the Tanaim had brought from the Chaldees... Essenes, believed in reincarnation." (Theosophical Glossary, pp. 113-14; The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 111n)
Eventually Alexandria, Egypt became the epicenter of cosmological and pagan religious ideas as well as the intellectual meeting point between Greek Mystery Religion/Hermetic magic initiates and nature sages and guardians of Kabala. After the fall of Jerusalem, Alexandria was the center from which occult pagan Jews would disguise their mystery tradition in Christian terminology and attempt to penetrate the fledgling Church with heresy.
One of the primary tactics employed by Cabbalist pagan Jews for this purpose is the same one employed by their modern evolutionary Gnostic pagan counterparts. It involves the reduction of the Genesis account, particularly the first three books, to allegory and myth, a ploy that eliminates the physical Adam from which all people descended and the sin that he transferred to the rest of the human race. This strikes directly at the heart of the Gospel: the need for the 'last Adam' to provide for us an escape from the wrath of God against sin incurred by the first Adam. In this way, not only is the work of Christ on the cross rendered superfluous, meaning the heart of the faith is ripped out, but God is made responsible for sin and evil. (1 Peter 3:18-22; 1 John 2:22)
Long ago, the teachings of some of the early Church Fathers regarding the apostasy toward the end of the church age predicted the reappearance of this evil tactic. The fathers categorized it a Gnostic pagan heresy.
In "Heresies 6.10" Hippolytus writes that the Gnostic pagan Simon Magus feigned faith and allegorized much of Scripture, especially Genesis, to support his evolutionary Hermetic and Gnostic occult pantheist teachings. Church Fathers Ireneaus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria reveal that Gnostic cult leader Marcion rejected the Old Testament, taught that the God of the Old Testament and his prophets are evil, made God the author of sin and removed all references that Christ was Creator (John 1:1) (Ireneaus, "Against Heresies 1.26, 5.1," Tertullian "Against Marcion 2.17," Clement of Alexandria, "Against Heresies 4.29)
In conclusion, the Babylonian Mystery Religion is the mother of evolutionary Cabala, Gnosticism and all other occult pagan traditions:
"....especially does Gnosticism testify to the antiquity of the Cabala. Of Chaldean origin... Gnosticism was Jewish in character long before it became Christian... Gnosticism – that is, the cabalistic 'Hokmah' (wisdom) – seems to have been the first attempt on the part of the Jewish sages to give the empirical mystic lore, with the help of Platonic and Pythagorean or Stoic ideas, a speculative turn; hence the danger of heresy...of which the systems of Philo, an adept in Cabala...show many pitfalls...Jewish gnosticism unquestionably antedates Christianity, for Biblical exegesis had already reached an age of five hundred years by the first century C.E. Judaism had been in close contact with Babylonian-Persian ideas for at least that length of time, and for nearly as long a period with Hellenistic ideas. Magic, also, which,...was a not unimportant part of the doctrines and manifestations of gnosticism, largely occupied Jewish thinkers. There is, in general, no circle of ideas to which elements of gnosticism have been traced, and with which the Jews were not acquainted." (Cabala, Jewish Encyclopedia)
Building the New Tower of Babylon
In the essay, "The Paganization of Biblical Studies," Dr. Peter Jones, director of truthxchange and adjunct professor of Westminster Seminary CA., writes that the books of the evolutionary Gnostic pagan Presbyterian heretic Lloyd Geering, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University, are promoted by the most powerful element of the Spirit of our age – the international occult New Age Luciferian elite-pagans – as programmatic templates for the future utopian pagan community from the point of view of Christian apostasy and socialism undergirded by evolutionary pantheist orthodoxy.
According to Geering, the world's future culture will be post-Christian, global, religiously pagan and evolutionary. This agenda is remarkably similar to that of Teilhard de Chardins' disciple, the ex-Roman Catholic Thomas Berry in his book, "The Great Work" which is also being implemented through texts of the UN's global programs.
The rising New World Order will be post-Christian because evolution proves that human beings, as they evolved out of primordial matter, created language, then symbols, then religious explanations and God Himself. Therefore tomorrow's culture will be pluralistic, syncretistic, relativistic and poly-gendered because evolution integrates all scientific, cultural, religious, economic and human gender into one worldwide anthill thus when the global society emerges from the evolutionary process,
"...it will require humanity to develop a new consciousness and a new form of spirituality" because "the new story which has become basic to the global world begins with a new word or idea...evolution." (ibid, Jones)
Like its' mother, Mystery Babylon, the scientifically-enlightened 'new' global religion of evolutionary transformism is occult pantheist advaita monism, which means that as an ancient impersonal god-force is within the cosmos, earth, human beings, rats, weeds, tumble bugs, cancer and everything else then all things are essentially 'one.' Since the god-force is within all things it is within the demonically 'illumined' consciousness of every spiritually evolved initiate and adept.
This being the case, by means of trance states, brain-altering drugs, transcendental meditation, visualization, channeling, Zen Buddhism, Kundalini yoga, tantra, and other occult ways, the initiate can channel the god-force within thereby becoming a little god who controls matter because he controls mind. The physical world then, is an illusion because reality is inside the divine mind of the god-man.
This way of thinking is captured by Orwell in his book, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" in which negation of the physical world is an integral part of the social and political philosophy of Big Brother and his despotic Party. At one stage in the book, Winston stumbles upon the shocking realization that in the end the Party would announce that two plus two made five because the logic of Big Brothers' position required it since the existence of external reality was denied by his philosophy. Thus when the Thought Police agent O'Brien tortures Winston for politically incorrect "wrong thought" he states,
"We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation – anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to....You must get rid of these nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature." (Orwell, "The New Spirituality and its Hallmarks, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal, Vol. 30:4-31:1, 2007, p. 19)
Evolving Toward Catastrophe
In "The Aquarian Conspiracy," a book that has been called 'the New Age Bible,' Marilyn Ferguson (1938-2008) admits that the 'new age' evolutionary pantheism and occult technologies being employed throughout America were at one time the private domain of ancient initiates. In fact, as Constance Cumbey reveals in her thoroughly researched book, "The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow," many New Age historians claim their occult religion and techniques originated in Atlantis and afterward were preserved in the ancient land of Babylon,
"...and surrounding Plains of Shinar and from there disseminated throughout the earth, including Taoist doctrines of China, Mayan-Aztec teachings of Mexico and Central/South America; Great Spirit teachings of the American Indians, Hindu/Buddhist teachings of Asia, etc." (pp. 250-251)
After the Flood, said Shuckford, while the faithful Noah remained in the East and established the worship of the true God, eighty years after the Flood his rebellious son Ham and his sons together with other family members departed and eventually settled in the plains of Shinar where they resolved to build a tower, a monument to their own pride, vanity, ambition and rebellion against God. (ibid, p.94)
It was Noah's son Ham, according to ancient Church Father Clement, who 'preserved' and revived the Mystery Religion of 'Atlantis' and its attendant evils:
"Fallen angels taught men the use of magical incantations that would force demons to obey man. After the flood Ham the son of Noah...discovered this and taught it to his sons. This became ingrained into the Egyptians, Persians, and Babylonians. Ham died shortly after the fall of the Tower of Babel. Nimrod, called Ninus by the Greeks, was handed this knowledge and by it caused men to go away from the worship of God and go into diverse and erratic superstitions and they began to be governed by the signs in the stars and motions of the planets." (Recognitions of Clement 4.26-29)
In his well-researched book, "Ancient Post-Flood History," Ken Johnson, Th.D., reports that the sons of Ham persuaded the people to accept that the true God was merely an impersonal creative force within all of nature, making man the highest form of life/god. Through the power of persuasion, Ham and his sons revived magical evolutionary transformism, pantheism and idolatry. (pp. 47-48)
Eventually Ham was deified and worshipped by later pagans as the gods Cronus and Jupiter:
"Ham is represented by many writers as a very wicked, immodest, and profligate creature: Berosus (i) makes him a magician, and to be the same with Zoroast or Zoroastres, and speaks of him as the public corrupter of mankind; and says that he taught men to live as before the flood, to lie with mothers, sisters, daughters, males and brutes, and creatures of all sorts; and that he actually did so himself, and therefore was cast out by his father Janus, or Noah, and got the name of "Chem," the infamous and immodest..." Upon seeing his father's nakedness Ham, "told his two brethren without; he went out of the tent after he had pleased himself with the sight... and in a wanton, ludicrous, and scoffing manner, related what he had seen: some of the Jewish Rabbins (k), as Jarchi relates, say that Canaan first saw it, and told his father of it; and some say (l), that he or Ham committed an unnatural crime with him; and others (m), that he castrated him; and hence, it is supposed, came the stories of Jupiter castrating his father Saturn, and Chronus his father Uranus." Genesis 9:22 Gill's Exposition
History did not begin after billions of years of evolution when primitive hominids swung down from the trees and discovered how to scratch crude symbols onto rocks. Nor did it begin after the Flood. At least 2,000 years of human existence preceded the Flood, meaning that when Noah and his family entered the ark they carried at least one hundred years of pre-flood memories, traditions, technology, and superior knowledge. Their world view was shaped by the historical Adam and Eve and the generations of their offspring. Thus Noah and his family brought with them not only the knowledge of the personal God, Special Creation, fall of man, the Deluge, sacrifice to God for the propitiation of sin, the arts of weapon-making and warfare, knowledge of letters, symbols, math, architecture, science, cosmetics, and agriculture but knowledge of first-hand encounters with Watchers, their occult teachings, the Nephilim, and primeval pantheism tied to magic, spiritism, herbal abortifacients, human and animal sacrifice, drinking of blood, males marrying males and even beasts, and many other evils.
In affirmation, the eminent researcher of antiquity James Bailey said:
"...human history can now be hesitantly traced back as an unbroken narrative to 4000 B.C....the picture emerging...is one of the Fall of Man in historic terms as well as his rise; it is a picture...more of degradation than of success; it is a picture of monotheism breaking down into polytheism and of the struggle to return to monotheism. The establishment view of the history of religion gradually progressing from animism to polytheism (then) to monotheism is the reverse of facts." ("The God-Kings and the Titans: The New World Ascendancy in Ancient Times 1973, p. 296)
Four thousand years before Christ were the antediluvian generations and the Watchers in the post-flood world, making the billions of years of evolutionary transformism a fabulous fable. It is neither 'new' (Ecclesiastes 1: 9-11) nor scientific except in the sense of pre-flood and post-flood occult science and attendant traditions revised and revamped for our own time, as Geering unhappily discovered.
Dr. Jones writes that Geering was surprised when he found out that the 'New Spirituality' has "links with pre-monotheistic...nature religions," leading Jones to wryly comment that in an odd turn of events,
"....contemporary spiritual' evolution goes backwards! Biblical theism disturbed evolutionary progress. The clocks have to be put back (for we are in the presence of) a powerful pagan/Gnostic theological agenda, claiming to be spanking new, objective and scientific, but as old as the hills."
Clocks have to be turned back, all the way back to the days of Noah in the pre-flood world where evolution is closely connected to the devil's lie that man is a being who though presently limited in time and space is nevertheless capable of achieving a great leap of being and magically evolving into a much more powerful god-like being in the future.
As the scientifically endarkened Gnostic pagan Spirit of our age simultaneously worships on the altar of 'self' as it self-righteously peers down its' long, pointy nose and contemptuously sniffs and sneers at the remnant of backwards, unscientific, anti-evolution faithful, in reality it is the entirely deluded pagan Spirit that is on a collision course with a modern version of the pre-flood world catastrophe – and we know how badly that ended.
© Linda Kimball
For more on this subject click here***
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose history, influence and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard (its first benefactor), Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy.
In the early years the College trained many Puritan ministers. The college offered a classic academic course based on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but one consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy.
Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32.3 billion as of June 2013. Wikipedia
“Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. Romans 1:28)
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WND
HARVARD HOSTING SATANIC 'BLACK MASS'
University accused of hypocrisy for anti-Catholic event
Published: May 9, 2014
JEROME R. CORSI
NEW YORK – With secularism on the rise in the United States, Satanists increasingly appear willing to challenge Christians for equal time and space in the public square, under the rubric of asserting First Amendment rights of religious freedom.
Now, under the auspices of a student group, Harvard University is going to allow a Satanist group from New York to perform on Monday a Black Mass on campus.
It will take place in the basement of Memorial Hall, despite strong objections voiced by the Roman Catholic Church.
“It’s unacceptable,” Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights headquartered in New York City told WND.
“Harvard would never allow an anti-gay event on the campus sponsored by an independent student organization and then have Harvard conclude, ‘Well, that’s the way the student’s feel about the issue and we believe in academic freedom.’”
Donahue said that if Harvard doesn’t stop it, the university should at the very least put out a statement condemning the event.
Donohue said he was particularly upset because Harvard’s first reaction was to misrepresent the event.
“Leaving aside the in-your-face assault to the Catholic Church that is being made here, I don’t like it when people lie,” he said.
“Harvard put out a statement initially that made it sound like the controversy related to a controversy over a Buddhist presentation or a Shinto presentation, without mentioning in their statement that it was the Satanic Temple of New York sponsoring a Black Mass on the campus,” Donahue said.
He noted that Harvard then “got so much flack they revised their statement, but they lied again saying the ceremony was meant to be educational.”
“There’s nothing educational about allowing Satanists to celebrate a Black Mass any more than it would be to allow the enemies of Muslims or the enemies of Jews to conduct an anti-Muslim or an anti-Semitic ceremony on campus,” he said. “How about Holocaust deniers? Is Harvard going to give them a forum on campus, too?”
The Harvard Cultural Studies Club, a student group organized under the auspices of the Harvard Extension School, has invited the Satanic Temple of New York City to conduct the Black Mass on Monday at the Queen’s Head Pub, a student eatery and beer hall located in the basement of Memorial Hall, a Victorian Gothic structure built north of Harvard Yard in Cambridge in the 1870s to commemorate Harvard students who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
WND contacted Harvard University for comment and received no response.
“We are hosting a reenactment of a historical event known as a Black Mass,” the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club said in a press release. “The performance is designed to be educational and is preceded by a lecture that provides the history, context and origin of the black mass.”
The Harvard statement denied the Black Mass would include a desecration of a consecrated host, an aspect of the typical Satanic Black Mass ceremony that is widely seen as an attack on the Catholic Church in particular.
“While a piece of bread is used in the reenactment, the performance unequivocally does not include a consecrated host,” the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club continued.
“Our purpose is not to denigrate any religion or faith, which would be repugnant to our educational purposes, but instead to learn and experience the history of different cultural practices. This performance is part of a larger effort to explore religious facets that continue to influence contemporary culture.”
Satanic activists
The Satanic Temple of New York appears particularly determined to promote Satanism under the guise of supporting the First Amendment.
The decision of Harvard University to allow the Cultural Studies Club to host a Satanic Mass on campus follows the continuing request by the Temple of Satan in New York to install their nearly finished seven-foot statue of Baphomet cast in bronze in a place of honor on the lawn in front of the Oklahoma state Capitol, next to a carving of the Ten Commandments that was erected in 2012.
Satanic Temple of New York unfinished statue of Baphomet intended for Oklahoma state Capitol grounds
“Should Holocaust deniers, for instance, be allowed to speak on a college campus?” Donohue asked. “No, they shouldn’t. But there should be a place in our society where they could speak? Yes, in New York, places like Madison Square Garden, Central Park and the Beacon Theater can be open to anyone to speak. But a university is about the pursuit of truth.”
Former Harvard student Doug Mesner, who has changed his name to Lucien Graves in his capacity as a leader and spokesman for the Satanic Temple of New York, told ABC News that the efforts to erect the Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma state Capitol reflect an effort by the group to “celebrate our progress as a pluralist nation founded on secular law.”
Graves said: “I would argue that the message behind our monument speaks more directly to the formation of U.S. constitutional values than the Ten Commandments possibly could.”
Ryan Kiesel, the executive director of the ACLU’s Oklahoma state chapter, which is currently contesting in court the Ten Commandments monument on the Oklahoma state Capitol grounds, said the monument should be removed, because it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The ACLU has not filed a similar lawsuit against the Baphomet statue.
“I think that our position is there shouldn’t be any religious monuments at the state Capitol, that anytime the government has a monument representing one faith it creates an atmosphere that is not welcoming to people of all faiths or non-believers,” Kiesel told the Tulsa World.
“If, at the end of the day, the Ten Commandments monument is allowed to remain on the Capitol grounds with its overtly Christian message, then the Satanic Temple’s proposal can’t be rejected because it is of a different religious viewpoint.”
Archdiocese of Boston objects
On Thursday, the Archdiocese of Boston asked Harvard to cancel the event, saying in a statement: “The Catholic community of Boston expresses its deep sadness and strong opposition to the plan to stage a ‘black mass’ on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge.”
The archdiocese said that for “the good of the Catholic faithful and all people, the Church provides clear teaching concerning Satanic worship.”
“This activity separates people from God and the human community, it is contrary to charity and goodness, and it places participants dangerously close to destructive works of evil.”
In response to the Black Mass, the Boston Archdiocese scheduled a holy hour beginning Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time at St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge.
In its public statement, the Archdiocese of Boston also referenced Pope Francis’ recent warning that Satan exists in the 21st Century.
On April 11, speaking in the chapel of the Vatican guesthouse known as St. Martha’s House, where he resides, the pope discussed Satan’s temptations of Christ.
“The devil tempted Jesus many times, and Jesus experienced temptation and persecution throughout his lifetime,” the pope said, as reported by Vatican Radio.
Francis warned that all Christians today must be aware of the reality.
“We too are the target of attacks by the devil because the spirit of Evil does not want our holiness,” Francis said. “But look out because the devil is present! The devil is here … even in the 21st Century! And we must not be naïve, right? We must learn from the Gospel how to fight against Satan.”
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NaturalSociety
Medical Drug-Pumping Microchip Plan to be Carried out by 2017
by Christina Sarich
May 7th, 2014
Updated 05/07/2014 at 12:53 am
Implanted medical microchips that can be expected to be mainstream by 2017 will be able to deliver drugs, including routine birth control – all through wireless communications. Currently, drug reservoir chips can be implanted right under the skin, delivering pharmaceuticals of all kinds, but here is the troubling part of this – they won’t be controlled by you – but rather by ‘medical professionals’. Imagine someone with the same level of morality as a Monsanto CEO, or a stock owner in Pfizer, or Bill Gates, deciding who gets which meds and how much. Scary, huh?
What’s more – these implanted drug-reservoir chips will be controlled remotely. You’ll be dosed day after day, perpetually, until a ‘professional’ decided to stop doping you up. Talk about a dream come true for the pharmaceutical industry!
The micro-chipped reservoir-technology was first developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the nineties. It was designed to be controlled through a wireless signal, just like your phone. The technology now powers the company called microCHIPS. As part of their corporate agenda, presented on their site, they say they intend to develop, ‘long-term implantable drug delivery technologies with wireless communications.’
Also, progestin and estrogen can be released into a woman’s body to act as a method of birth control.
Now, here’s where it get’s creepy. If a woman could turn her own microchip birth control on or off of her own accord, that would be…better, but within Obamacare, there are new laws which require to offer contraceptive services via microchip, and there are rumors that say eventually we will all be required to be micro-chipped.
These new technologies could conceivably deliver drugs automatically for up to 16 years straight, based on preliminary clinical trials. Furthermore, hospitals and doctors would know exactly which drugs you took and when, down to the second, with no privacy whatsoever.
This is not a new idea - Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado, Director of Neuropsychiatry Yale University Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974 discusses it extensively in a paper in which he states, “Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.”
CEO Bradley Paddock believes, “The MicroCHIPS implantable drug delivery device is the greatest advancement in delivering medicine since the first tablet pill was developed in 1876.” Try reading the UN’s Agenda 21, and see if you agree.
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RT
Discovery of ‘alien’ DNA Hailed by Scientists, Raises Ethical Concerns
May 8, 2014
Reuters/Darren Staples/via RT.com
American scientists have for the first time ever made it possible for an organism to survive with artificial DNA, making it more likely new medicines can be developed, while raising ethical concerns among some advocates.
For researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California the breakthrough, published Wednesday in the Nature science journal, was 15 years in the making.
The announcement is so remarkable because, for billions of years, all life has been made up of DNA subunits categorized by four letters: A, T, C and G. Scientists have now added two new DNA building blocks to E. coli bugs, which then reproduced as normal with the two extra letters in their genetic code.
The research could eventually lead to the production of completely new proteins that could be used either for medicinal purposes or industrial products. It also lends credibility to the theory that life in outer space could exist entirely without the DNA found on Earth.
“What we have now is a living cell that literally stores increased genetic information,” said Floyd Romesberg, the Scripps chemical biologist who led the study. “This shows that other solutions to storing information are possible and of course, takes us closer to an expanded-DNA biology that will have many exciting applications – from new medicines to new kinds of nanotechnology.”
Romesberg said that because the new building blocks, dubbed X and Y, are infused with simple bacteria they would not constitute a danger if they somehow left the laboratory and were spread among the public. He added that his company, Synthorx, is exploring what possibilities could be in the future for X and Y, especially when they are combined with the thousands of amino acids to develop new vaccines.
“This is just a beautiful piece of work,” Martin Fussenegger, a synthetic biologist at ETH Zurich, told the Guardian. “DNA replication is really the cream of the crop of evolution which operates the same way in all living systems. Seeing that this machinery works with synthetic base pairs is just fascinating.”
The optimism was not shared by all. This research could eventually inspire critics to call for increased restrictions on synthetic biology, a field primarily devoted to the design and construction of biological devices for useful purposes.
“The arrival of this unprecedented ‘alien’ life form could in time have far-reaching ethical, legal, and regulatory implications,” Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, a Canadian advocacy organization, told the New York Times. “While synthetic biologists invent new ways to monkey with the fundamentals of life, governments haven’t even been able to cobble together the basics of oversight, assessment or regulation for this surging field.”
Opposition has increased as synthetic biology has made progress. The ETC Group, an international organization devoted to “the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights,” has called for a global moratorium on scientific development until the ethical ramifications of synthetic biology can be fully examined.
Romesberg, perhaps not surprisingly, implied this week that such self-imposed restrictions when the field’s potential is so exciting.
“If you read a book that was written with four letters, you’re not going to be able to tell many interesting stories,” he said. “If you’re given more letters, you can invent new words, you can find new ways to use those words and you can probably tell more interesting stories.”
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theguardian
Netanyahu pushes to define Israel as nation state of Jewish people only
PM proposes rare change to basic law in response to 'constant and increasing assault' on aspects of Israel's legitimacy
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
Sunday 4 May 2014 14.03 EDT
Binyamin Netanyahu, centre, at the weekly meeting of his cabinet. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/AFP/Getty Images
Binyamin Netanyahu will push ahead with a rare change to Israel's basic laws – which amount to the country's constitution – to insist Israel is "the nation state of one people only – the Jewish people – and of no other people".
At Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the civil rights of minorities, including Arabs, would be guaranteed, and the move was vital at a time when aspects of Israel's legitimacy were "under a constant and increasing assault from abroad and at home".
Netanyahu proposed the change last week during a visit to Tel Aviv's Independence Hall, attracting fierce criticism from political rivals and support from some of his allies. The move follows a Palestinian refusal in peace talks to recognise the status that Netanyahu described.
The proposed law would be in addition to Israel's declaration of independence of May 1948 – the anniversary of which is celebrated on Tuesday – which defines Israel as a Jewish state.
Most of Israel's basic laws deal with procedural issues relating to elections, the appointment of the prime minister, state payments and the administration of the judiciary, but some laws have been more controversial, including the 1980 law that designated Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Despite the intention that the new law should guarantee full equal rights, critics say it strays into contentious territory in its explicit definition which, regardless of passport and citizenship, would codify a differential notion of nationhood.
Netanyahu laid out his rationale for the change at the cabinet meeting. "The state of Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. Our basic laws give full expression to the democratic side of the state," he said. "On the other hand, that the state of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people is not sufficiently expressed in our basic laws, and this is what the draft basic law is meant to provide.
"The state of Israel provides full equal rights, individual rights, to all its citizens, but it is the nation state of one people only – the Jewish people – and of no other people. And therefore, in order to bolster the status of the state of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, I intend to submit a basic law that will anchor this status."
He added: "Of course, there are those who do not want the state of Israel to be defined as the nation state of the Jewish people. They want a Palestinian nation state to be established alongside us and that Israel should gradually become a binational, Arab-Jewish state inside shrunken borders. But I simply say that one cannot hold the national stick at both of its national ends.
"They cannot say that they want to separate from the Palestinians in order to prevent a binational state, which has a certain logic, and also sanctify a binational, Jewish-Arab state within the permanent borders of the state of Israel."
Among those who have expressed concern over the proposal is the justice minister, Tzipi Livni. Although in favour of defining Israel more clearly in law as "the national home of the Jewish people and a democratic state", she has expressed opposition to "any law that gives superiority" to the Jewish nature of state over the country's democratic values.
She said she could only support legislation where "Jewish and democratic would have the same weight, not more Jewish than democratic, nor more democratic than Jewish".
Her remarks echoed those of the Labour party leader, Isaac Herzog, last week when the idea was first floated. "With all its being, the Labour party supports Israel as a Jewish and democratic state," he said. "Labour built the state and its leaders formulated the declaration of independence, the foundational document that anchors Israel as a Jewish state.
"Unfortunately, the diplomatic destruction Netanyahu is causing will lead Israel to lose its Jewish majority and become a binational state. This unfortunate fact is something no law can hide."
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Arutz Sheva
Netanyahu 'Asked Rabbi to Allow Giving David's Tomb to Vatican'
An MK Says Netanyahu has contacted the Chief Sephardic Rabbi, asked for halakhic permission to make the move.
By Hezki Ezra, Gil Ronen
First Publish: 5/1/2014, 5:36 PM
A Knesset Member said Thursday that Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef told him that the Prime Minister's bureau contacted him and asked to grant halakhic permission for Israel to hand over the Tomb of David to the Vatican.
The startling news was revealed by the Knesset Member during a tour of the Tomb of David by four MKs – Yoni Chetboun of the Jewish Home, who initiated the tour, Moshe Feiglin (Likud-Beytenu), Nissim Ze'ev (Shas), and Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism – UTJ).
R to L: MKs Feiglin, Chetboun, Ze'ev. PR photo
The MKs were unanimous in declaring that they intend to do everything within their power to forestall any attempt to hand over the Tomb to the Vatican. There are also reports that not just the Tomb, but the entire Mount Zion compound is up for transfer. The MKs made clear that the zone is under Israeli sovereignty and will remain so.
There have been reports, recently, of a secret negotiation channel between the Vatican and the Israeli government, regarding the Tomb – and especially its second floor, which the Vatican calls the “Room of the Last Supper” – and the Mount Zion compound.
Officially, this report was denied by the government, with Deputy Minister Ze'ev Elkin taking to the Knesset podium to state that it was untrue.
However, the government has decided to place the exclusive authority regarding the holy sites in the hands of the prime minister – fueling speculation that a secret deal is indeed in the works.
The Vatican's attempts to gain a sovereign foothold on Mount Zion have been going on for year, but thus far unsuccessfully.
The visit to Israel by Pope Francis is less than a month away. This is a factor in the timing of the MKs' tour of the compound. A representative of the Religions Ministry's Department of Holy Sites was also present.
The MKs promised to pass a law making the Tomb of David an official holy site.
"For many years, the Vatican has been investing large sums in purchasing assets in Jerusalem, with the purpose of blurring the city's Jewish character,” said Chetboun. “This trend must be blocked, and the Basic Law on Jerusalem, which forbids handing over sovereignty on parts of the city to foreign entities, must be enforced. Today's tour is only the beginning of the struggle, and we will bring more MKs here. The Tomb of David is a cornerstone of the city's Jewish history, we must safeguard it.”
MK Feiglin said after the tour, “The attempts to transfer sovereignty over the Tomb of David to the Vatican are a direct continuation of the transfer of sovereignty in the Temple Mount to the Jordanians. The government of Israel is buying a false calm at the price of forfeiting our most sacred sites, under cover of darkness and against the law.”
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MailOnline
Is this the beginning of the end for Syrian rebels? Fighters surrender city of Homs to Assad's troops after three-year siege
Syrian rebel fighters have left the city Homs after a three-year siege
Government troops will move in later today to take back control
Green buses removed fighters from the city as part of amnesty deal
Elsewhere rebels blew up a hotel being used as a government base
Militia believed to have planted explosives in tunnels dug under building
By CHRIS PLEASANCE
PUBLISHED: 13:29 EST, 8 May 2014 | UPDATED: 20:35 EST, 8 May 2014
Syrian rebels have surrendered the city of Homs to forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, bringing a three-year siege of the city by government troops to an end.
According to Homs Gov. Talal Baraz, more than 1,500 troops have left the city since Wednesday, giving up their positions in the Old Homs district. The city will be declared 'secure' when government troops move in later today.
However, in a show of defiance, rebel forces in Aleppo blew up a hotel being used as a base by government troops after digging tunnels underneath and packing them with explosives.
Troops loyal to Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad (left) have retaken the city of Homs after rebel forces left as part of an amnesty deal. Green buses arrived today to take the remaining fighters away (right)
As part of an amnesty deal in Homs, rebel fighters were taken on green buses out of the city once dubbed the 'capital of the revolution' after militias seized large parts of it during the 'Arab spring' in 2011.
This afternoon a banner on Syrian TV said the last of the rebels left the city, proclaiming, 'Old Homs is totally clean of armed terrorist groups' - the term used by the government for the rebels.
As Al-Assad's troops entered the city the extent of destruction caused by two years of continuous fighting was laid bare, with whole neighbourhoods reduced to rubble and building reduced to concrete skeletons.
The city was once home to nearly a million people, according to a 2002 census, but its central districts are now virtual ghost towns, littered with twisted metal an broken concrete.
While re-taking Homs marks a major victory for Al-Assad, elsewhere in Syria today rebel fighters reduced the once-luxurious Carlton Hotel in Aleppo to dust after digging tunnels underneath it and packing them with explosives.
The hotel was being used as a base by government troops at the time, though it was not immediately clear how many died in the attack.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which maintains a network of activists on the ground, said at least 14 soldiers were killed in the blast. Islamic Front, the rebel alliance which claimed responsibility for the attack, claimed to have killed 50 soldiers.
The blast set off a gigantic mushroom cloud next to the historic citadel of Aleppo, collapsing the Carlton Hotel in a government-held area near the front lines in the city, which has been one of the bloodiest and destructive battlegrounds of Syria's civil war.
While it is not thought the attack was directly linked to the withdrawal from Homs, it is a powerful display by the rebels, showing they can still inflict heavy damage on Al-Assad's forces.
In a live broadcast from the site of blast, Syrian state TV's correspondent in Aleppo stood on a pile of rubble, saying that the army had been using the building as a base and soldiers were positioned there at the time of the explosion.
The report did not mention casualties as the Syrian government does not reveal the numbers of soldiers killed in the civil war.
The correspondent said: 'They [rebels] use tunnels like rats because they cannot face the Syrian Arab Army.'
It is not the first time rebels are believed to have used the technique to attack the Carlton. In February part of the building collapsed after fighters allegedly dug underneath the hotel an filled them with explosives.
The Front, an alliance of several Islamic groups fighting to topple Assad, has also used the technique to carry out deadly attacks against government forces in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.
The city of Aleppo has been carved up into opposition- and government-held areas since the rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012, capturing territory along Syria's northern border with Turkey.
In recent months, government aircraft have continuously bombed rebel-held areas of the city and the opposition fighters have hit back, firing mortars into government-held areas. The rebels also have detonated car bombs in residential areas, killing dozens of people.
The Islamic Front posted a statement on its official Twitter account Thursday saying that its 'fighters this morning leveled the Carlton Hotel barracks in Old Aleppo and a number of buildings near it, killing 50 soldiers.'
Syria's uprising began with largely peaceful protests and has evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones, pitting largely Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad's government that is dominated by Alawites, a sect of Shiite Islam. Islamic extremists, including foreign fighters and Syrian rebels who have taken up hard-line al-Qaida-style ideologies, have played an increasingly prominent role among fighters, dampening the West's support for the rebellion to overthrow Assad.
***
MailOnline
The month that shook the world: Incredible time-lapse reveals planet as it was rocked by record-breaking earthquakes in April
Earth shown as calm until April 1 when huge earthquake rocks Chile
Another huge earthquake shakes Solomon Islands in the South Pacific
The activity doesn’t let up all month with larger-than-normal quakes all in Nicaragua, Mexico, Canada, and even an unusual one in the South Atlantic
According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which issues alerts for tsunamis, there were 13 major earthquakes in April
By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD
PUBLISHED: 09:16 EST, 2 May 2014 | UPDATED: 09:18 EST, 2 May 2014
The 6.0-magnitude earthquake that jolted parts of Indonesia today served as a reminder of just how active the seemingly-solid ground beneath us can be.
And these reminders have become increasingly frequent. On average, the world only sees one or two earthquakes per month that are 6.5-magnitude or higher.
But April produced a higher-than-normal number of the major seismic events.
Scroll down for video…
According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC), which issues alerts for tsunamis, there were 13 major earthquakes in April. Five were higher than 7.8, which prompted tsunami warnings.
Moderate-to-large earthquakes are less common, but last month was ‘easily a record for this institution,’ according to the PTWC.
The time-lapse takes you on a journey of all recorded large and medium-sized earthquakes that took place from January through to April of this year.
The Earth appears calm up until April 1 when a huge 8.2 magnitude earthquake rocks northern Chile
The Earth continues to shake with another earthquake that hits the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific
The Earth appears calm up until April 1 when a huge 8.2 magnitude earthquake rocks northern Chile.
From there, the Earth continues to shake with another huge earthquake that hits the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
The activity doesn’t let up all month. But what is interesting, according to the PTWC, is the sheer number of other earthquakes that weren't part of these two major clusters.
There were isolated larger-than-normal quakes all over the world—in Nicaragua, Mexico, Canada, and even an unusual one in the South Atlantic.
The Centre gave no indication to what might have been behind the huge change in seismic activity.
The animation concludes with a summary map showing all of the earthquakes in this four-month period.
The activity doesn't let up all month. But what is interesting, according to the PTWC, is the sheer number of other earthquakes that weren't part of these two major clusters
The Centre gave no indication to what might have been behind the huge change in seismic activity. The animation concludes with a summary map showing all of the earthquakes in this four-month period
( For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. Mark 13:8)
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theguardian
'Vampire therapy' could reverse ageing, scientists find
A transfusion of youthful blood may halt or even reverse the ageing process as two studies find that the chemical make-up of younger blood has surprising health benefits
Transfusions of young blood could hold the key to reversing the signs of ageing, scientists believe Photo: AP
By Sarah Knapton, Science Correspondent
6:00PM BST 04 May 2014
It may seem the stuff of gothic horror novels, but transfusions of young blood could reverse the ageing process and even cure Alzheimer’s Disease, scientists believe.
Throughout history, cultures across the globe have extolled the properties of youthful blood, with children sacrificed and the blood of young warriors drunk by the victors.
It was even rumoured that the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il injected himself with blood from healthy young virgins to slow the ageing process.
Now scientists have found that young blood actually ‘recharges’ the brain, forms new blood vessels and improves memory and learning.
In parallel research, scientists at Harvard University also discovered that a ‘youth protein’ which circulates in the blood is responsible for keeping the brain and muscles young and strong.
The protein, known as ‘GDF11’, is present in the bloodstream in large quantities when we are young but peters out as we age.
Although both the discoveries were made in mice, researchers are hoping to begin human trials in the next two to three years, in studies which could bring rapid improvements for human longevity and health.
“This should give us all hope for a healthier future,” said Prof Doug Melton, of Harvard's Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.
“We all wonder why we were stronger and mentally more agile when young, and these two unusually exciting papers actually point to a possible answer.
“There seems to be little question that, GDF11 has an amazing capacity to restore aging muscle and brain function.”
Last year the team discovered that the protein could repair damaged hearts. But the new study showed that that raising the levels of the GDF11 protein in older mice improved the function of every organ in the body.
Harvard stem cell biologist Prof Lee Rubin added: “We do think that, at least in principal, there will be a way to reverse some of the decline of aging with a single protein.
"It isn't out of question that GDF11, or a drug developed from it, might be worthwhile in Alzheimer's Disease.”
It is likely that the protein is at least partly responsible for the parallel finding by Stanford University that young blood can reverse the signs of ageing.
In the study, the blood of three-month-old mice was repeatedly injected into 18-month-old mice near the end of their natural life span.
The "vampire therapy" improved the performance of the elderly mice in memory and learning tasks.
Structural, molecular and functional changes were also seen in their brains, the study published in the journal Science found.
If the same were seem in humans, it could lead to new therapies for recharging our aging brains and novel drugs for treating dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease.
“We’ve shown that at least some age-related impairments in brain function are reversible. They’re not final,” said Dr Saul Villeda, of Stanford’s School of Medicine.
Ageing mice given eight infusions of young blood over three weeks improved their performance in mental tests of fear condition and locating a hidden platform in a water maze.
Evidence was seen of new connections forming in the hippocampus, a brain region vital to memory and sensitive to ageing.
Dendritic spines - finger-like extensions from the branches of neurons that are thought to play a role in memory formation - also became more dense.
Infusions of blood from other elderly mice had no effect, the study, published in the journal Nature, found.
“This could have been done 20 years ago,” said lead researcher Dr Tony Wyss-Coray of Stanford.
“You don’t need to know anything about how the brain works. You just give an old mouse young blood and see if the animal is smarter than before. It’s just that nobody did it.”
"Our data indicate that exposure of aged mice to young blood late in life is capable of rejuvenating synaptic plasticity and improving cognitive function.
"Future studies are warranted in aged humans and potentially those suffering from age-related neurodegenerative disorders."
Dr Eric Karran, from the dementia charity Alzheimer's Research UK, said: “This technically complex study looks at the effects of exposing old mice to blood-borne factors from young mice on age-related cognitive decline.
“Although the treatments tested here rejuvenate certain aspects of learning and memory in mice, these studies are of unknown significance to humans.
“This research, while very interesting, does not investigate the type of cognitive impairment that is seen in Alzheimer's disease, which is not an inevitable consequence of ageing.”
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Bloodsuckers, The
David Berg
—The Scientific Vampires! (A dream.)
September 20, 1975
But the next scene was more like a nightmare! They were rounding us all up in this huge barn like warehouse—there must have been several hundred of us inside like prisoners. But our captors seemed to be trying to avoid the impression that we were prisoners but that were voluntarily taking part in some kind of experiment, a scientific experiment, and they were asking who'd like to be next to volunteer to demonstrate somebody's new scientific discovery some kind of physical regeneration. I remember the scientist's name was definitely mentioned and so was the name of the new method, but I can't remember either one of them now.
"You will see now that as we start the pump the blood is being drained from the subject slowly, first from her brain and head as she is gradually losing consciousness quietly and peacefully‚ so that she no longer even knows what's happening. It is all very painless and pleasant and she no longer has anything to worry about." And sure enough as we watched‚ right before our horrified gaze the blood was draining from her head, and her face went white and she obviously became unconscious! Then her neck went white and her shoulders and the whiteness seemed to move down her naked body from her head toward her toes.
Meanwhile we could see these two men sitting at her feet sucking on these tubes from which we could see her blood flowing into their mouths! They both seemed to get almost demonically gleeful expressions of great exhilaration and excitement, becoming very excited and as though they were exploding with energy! And I thought to myself‚ "My God, what a horror! How awful! They're killing her right before eyes and drinking her blood right in front of us and claiming this renews their energy and their life forces and helps them to live longer by drinking human blood like vampires, but making it all look very very scientific and sound very very humane!
You know, one of the effects of radiation and atomic fallout from atomic explosions is a type of blood cancer that causes leukemia or pernicious anemia that literally eats up your blood, and the people that have it have to have constant or frequent transfusions to stay alive. So I wonder if these vicious so–called scientists of whatever horror system was in existence had discovered this was a way of getting immediate fresh warm human blood for their people to drink to stay alive.
Because you know there's not really much difference between blood transfusions and drinking blood—it amounts to about the same thing! Although getting blood by transfusions appears to be a little more scientific and humane and not quite as gory as actually sucking somebody's blood with your mouth!There must be something demonic about vampires! It must be some kind of horrible human perversion that actually has existed at some time or other where cruel human beings actually sucked the blood of their victims, as these monstrous men were doing, while trying to make it more scientific and humane and that the victim was merely being put out of her misery very mercifully while they were receiving the benefits of her blood.
Do you suppose men are actually going to come to that in those last horrible days of the end of the world? They'll actually go around sucking each other's blood to save themselves from dying from atomic radiation and his effects of blood destroying atomic leukemia! Well it was certainly vivid and horrifying, and I was so terrified by it all and the repulsiveness of it all that I guess I woke up.
Apparently in the last days men will become like animals, brute beasts devouring each other to stay alive‚ like those mothers in the Bible who ate their own children to save themselves from starvation during siege and famine! Perverted reprobate anti-God man will stoop to anything, any horror, any atrocity, any cruelty, any perversion to please and save himself in those last days, while trying to make it look like it's all right, humane, scientific, palatable and acceptable to even drink dry the warm living blood of another human being straight from their body and thus selfishly surviving by bringing about another's death!
What an awful horrible thought! I never like to dwell on things like perverted and atrocious cruel inhumane behaviour. I never liked stories about the blood-and-guts violence of war and crime and disasters or even sports. But apparently the violence–loving, blood-lusting, destruction–crazed, war-mad, scientifically-insane, monstrous man of the future is going to stoop to anything to destroy and kill and get what he wants‚ while trying to hypocritically justify his actions and make it sound scientific and humane even as he does today.
I think I was being given a picture of the depths to which man will sink in the last days before God destroys the wicked and the putrid Earth and creates a New Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, with a new and righteous generation saved by His love and grace because of their faith in Him.
***
***
WND
EGYPT SET TO REJECT U.S. IN FAVOR OF RUSSIA
Putin filling vacuum of Washington's inaction
Published: May 9, 2014
F. MICHAEL MALOOF
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Egypt
WASHINGTON – The United States stands to lose its alliance with Egypt as Cairo turns to Russia for support, a development that would have major geo-political and strategic consequences, according to a team of national security experts who just returned from meeting with Egyptian officials.
While less than half of Egypt’s armed forces’ hardware is Soviet-pattern weaponry, Egypt’s reliance on Moscow and other non-American suppliers may rapidly increase unless Washington lifts its current embargo on U.S. military aid and equipment.
Members of the Council Global Security and London Center for Policy Research were in Cairo April 15-18 to meet with Field Marshal Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, who could become the next president of Egypt when the country holds presidential elections May 26-27.
The group also met with General of Intelligence Gen. Mohammed Farid el-Tohamy, Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces and Minister of Defense Gen. Sedki Sobhy and Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy, along with other government officials, business leaders, religious clerics and members of civil society.
The group, led by Herb London, president of the London Center for Policy Research, was comprised of retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely; Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News; Judy Miller, formerly of the New York Times and now with the Manhattan Institute; Tera Dahl of the Council on Global Security; retired Gen. Robert Scales; and former British Ministry of Defense adviser Michael Kay.
The group expressed particular concern about the lack of U.S. support for Egypt’s military, much of whose equipment is from the Soviet era.
This concern has been heightened by the recent visit by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Egypt seeking to extend Moscow’s influence through an offer of billions of dollars in military assistance.
The U.S. had suspended some $1.3 billion in funding to the Egyptian military following the July 2013 ouster of democratically elected but Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi.
However, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries provided $12 billion and basically told the U.S. to keep its $1.3 billion in U.S. military assistance. The Arab monarchies opposed the Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian president and backed his ouster.
The Saudis were especially upset with the U.S. when the Obama administration didn’t back the ouster of Morsi. To this day, the Obama administration opposes his ouster by the Egyptian military.
At the same time, the Russians offered to sell Egypt some $4 billion in jet fighters, anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, which would effectively give Russia greater influence not only in Egypt, which is the largest Arab country, but throughout the Arab world.
The Egyptian revolution in 1952 by then-Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who later became president of Egypt, paved the way for major military assistance from the then-Soviet Union, whose equipment still is being serviced to this day by the Russians.
In an exclusive interview with WND after his return, Vallely said that in his discussions with el-Sisi, the presidential candidate told him that despite offers of Russian military assistance, the “door is not closed” for the U.S. to resume military assistance and maintain its influence in Egypt.
However, el-Sisi said Egypt needs the equipment, along with spare parts for Apache helicopters the U.S. gave Egypt. Vallely said the helicopters are used for anti-terrorism operations which have been underway in the Sinai Peninsula against al-Qaida insurgents.
Vallely said that el-Sisi told him that he was “not necessarily leaning toward Russia but added that he doesn’t “trust” the United States.
“Not one government in the Middle East trusts the U.S. government,” Vallely said. “Russia is kicking our a– all over the place.”
Vallely said, however, that el-Sisi wants to keep the “lines of communication open” with the U.S., but in the background he and other Egyptian officials are “pissed off” at the U.S.
In an example of keeping open the channels of communications with the U.S., Vallely said that el-Tohmay, the Egyptian intelligence chief, stays in phone contact with U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan.
Vallely added that if Egypt sides up ultimately with Russia, it will have profound geo-political and strategic implications for U.S. foreign policy, none of it good.
“The Russians are filling the vacuum left by the United States,” Vallely said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “knows that the U.S. is weak and will fill in where the U.S. leaves a vacuum,” he said.
In its other observations, the group said that the ouster of Morsi in July 2013 was not a coup but a revolution. Morsi was elected to office in June 2012.
“Among those with whom the delegation met, there was compelling unanimity that the Muslim Brotherhood government had thoroughly betrayed the people’s expectations for democratic rule and were serving solely their own narrow interests,” the statement said. “After ousting the Muslim Brotherhood from power after the largest protest movement in history, with 33 million Egyptians coming to the streets, a resounding 95 percent majority of the country ratified a new, more secular constitution,” it said.
The group said the any new president will be subject to this constitution rather than being able to “affect the constitutional process from his office, as Morsi did through an Islamist-dominated parliament.”
Since Morsi’s ouster, the interim government has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. An Egyptian court recently sentenced some 683 Brotherhood members to death, including its leader, Mohamed Badie. Morsi still awaits a separate trial on charges of terrorism.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the group said, always has been committed to establishing exclusively Muslim regimes “which deny the rights of minorities, especially Jews and Christians, and is defined at its core by its hatred of America and the West.”
***
THE INDEPENDENT
Ukraine crisis EXCLUSIVE: US and Europe planning to ‘cut off’ Russia’s gas supply
Exclusive: G7 leaders are expected to sign off on an 'emergency response plan' to assist Ukraine this winter if its neighbour restricts gas supplies
OLIVER WRIGHT
WHITEHALL EDITOR
Friday 09 May 2014
Britain is drawing up plans with the US and other European countries to “disarm” the threat of President Vladimir Putin using Russian gas and oil supplies as “a weapon” against Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbours.
Next month, David Cameron and other G7 leaders are expected to sign off on an “emergency response plan” to assist Ukraine this winter if Russia restricts gas supplies.
At the same time, G7 energy ministers this week agreed a plan to eliminate Europe’s reliance on Russian oil and gas over the longer term and prevent energy security being used as political bargaining chip by the Kremlin.
Russia currently supplies around 30 per cent of all gas consumed within Europe and more than 50 per cent of the gas used by Ukraine.
In 2006, when the Russian state-controlled energy producer Gazprom turned off supplies through its Ukrainian pipeline Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland reported gas pressure in their pipelines fell by 30 per cent.
While only a small fraction of gas used by the UK comes from Russia, any restriction in supply has a dramatic impact on prices.
Under the G7 proposals, support would be given to build several new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals across Europe, while the US would lift restrictions on the export of shale gas.
At the same time, the EU will invest in new pipelines to move gas from West to East and increase supply routes from North Africa.
Japan is also understood to be prepared to re-start some of its nuclear plants that were mothballed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Japan is now one of the largest importers of LNG, which has pushed up prices to record levels.
Senior Government sources said the ongoing crisis had “concentrated minds”, particularly in Europe, over the energy threat and said there was for the first time a “clear consensus” to take action.
“The diversification of sources and routes for fossil fuels is essential,” the G7 communique stated.
“No country should depend totally on one supplier. Nor should energy be used as a means of political coercion or a threat to security.”
Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary who represented Britain at the G7 talks in Rome, told The Independent that unless action was taken now Russia would “undoubtedly continue to use energy as a weapon”.
“It is completely unacceptable for President Putin to use Russia’s gas and oil supplies as a weapon to exert control and power over Ukraine – or any other country,” he said.
“But this is not the first time he has done this, so we have to take a stand this time, or he will undoubtedly continue to use energy as a weapon.”
Mr Davey said that the G7 had agreed a process that, over the longer term, would “disarm the threat”. But he added that in the short term there would be a plan in place within the next few weeks to support Ukraine’s energy needs this winter if there is a Russia switch-off of gas.
“We will be drawing up an emergency winter response if Russia threatens its gas supplies, which will be discussed again at the G7 Heads of State meeting next month.”
A Downing Street source confirmed that Mr Cameron “fully backed” the strategy, adding that it was possible that the G7 leader summit in Brussels could “go further”.
“We will be examining the full range of options available,” they added.
***
PRESS TV
Russia warning ignorance, scary mistake by US: Analyst
The United States would be committing a big mistake should it ignore Russia’s threat of taking action to repel anti-Moscow moves over the crisis in Ukraine, an analyst says.
David Lindorff, an American investigative journalist, was talking to Press TV two days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow reserves the right to take appropriate action if the West continues its anti-Russia moves.
“So for the US not to take seriously Russia’s announcement that it is going to defend its southern border from that kind of interference, it would be a very scary mistake,” Lindorff stated.
The analyst said European countries heavily depend on Russia’s gas, which is delivered to them via a pipeline cutting through Ukraine.
“Russia holds some of the higher cards in this kind of high stakes Poker with economic sanctions,” he added.
Lindorff stated that any attempt by Washington to pit the European governments against Russia would be like inflicting “very depressing impact” on the European economy.
“The wiser heads are aware that it is within Russia’s sphere of influence and it would be madness to try to take on the Russian army right next to its own border,” he said.
The United States and its allies have recently imposed new sanctions on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.
Tensions between the West and Moscow over Ukraine heightened after Crimea declared independence from Kiev and formally applied to become part of the Russian Federation following a referendum on March 16, in which about 97 percent of voters said yes to reunion with Russia.
***
RT
US hypocrisy over Ukraine ‘absolutely stunning’
Daniel McAdams is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He served as foreign affairs advisor to US Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) for 12 years.
Get short URL
Published time: May 06, 2014 02:29
Ukrainian soldiers stand at a checkpoint
The US approach to violence in Ukraine is hypocritical, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute, Daniel McAdams, told RT. Holding an election in such a climate is impossible, yet the US will accept any result of the “wonderfully democratic” vote.
RT:The US has repeatedly praised Kiev for trying to de-escalate the situation, yet we all saw what happened in Odessa and what looks like it was allowed to happen...How do those things tally up? Daniel McAdams: Well it is interesting, because in Kiev, not that many months ago, a couple of months to be exact, unarmed police forces were sent out against the violent protesters, and the US government – including the president and the secretary of state have – said they were “disgusted” by the show of force against these protesters. And you see in Ukraine, it is obvious that the government in Kiev is using the military against its own citizens. It is blockading cities, starving people out. This is exactly what the US used as a pretext for attack in places like Libya and elsewhere. So the hypocrisy of the US side is absolutely stunning.
RT: We heard Marie Harf from the US State Department again praising Ukraine's “restraint,” where she said that Kiev has a “responsibility to maintain law and order for their own people,” and that “the onus really is on the Russian government to pull back.” What is your comment to that?
DM: You have to wonder what reality these people are occupying. They have tried pulling a fast one, the State Department did. A couple of weeks ago when they put out those phony photos what they claimed were the Russian forces in Ukraine. The person who took those pictures, as you know, said they are completely phony. The New York Times was burned on the US State Department lies. To its credit, the NYT has actually sent some people into eastern Ukraine, and they have reported just a couple of days ago, that actually these militias don’t contain any Russians whatsoever and the people are not necessarily wanting to join Russia anyway. They are using old, worn out weapons, so the State Department just continues to pile lie upon lie. It is absolutely revolting. RT: Will things get better after the Ukrainian presidential elections later this month?
DM: How can you run a presidential election when the army is firing on its own people? I have been an election monitor many times in bad situations, and it is simply impossible. Likewise, I'm afraid to say these referendums in the east will simply be ignored by the US or if this resolves, this desire will come out of presidential elections; the US and the OSCE will say, it is “wonderfully democratic.” RT: We are still hearing the US calling for people in the east of Ukraine to lay down their weapons, but at the same time they are backing Kiev's government crackdown...How does it add up, calling for one thing yet doing the other?
DM: Well you see already there are reports in the German press over the weekend that the US CIA and the FBI has sent at least a couple of dozen people to advise the Ukrainian government on how to crack down. Perhaps they were advising them on assassination techniques and these sorts of things, one never knows.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
***
Strategic Culture Foundation
ONLINE JOURNAL05.05.2014 | 00:00
Wayne MADSEN
Strategic-Culture.org
Obama prepares to smash BRICS during his last few years in office
The buildup of NATO air and ground forces along the borders of Russia in eastern Europe and President Barack Obama’s American power-influencing trip to Asia have a single purpose. The seen and unseen forces who dictate policy to their political puppets in Washington, London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and other vassal capital cities have decided to smash BRICS – the emergent financial power bloc encompassing Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Bilateral and multilateral discussions among the five emerging economic powers aimed at decoupling BRICS economies from the U.S. dollar as a reserve and trading currency have met with the only power Washington can muster on behalf of itself and its foundering allies – military force. The problems between Ukraine and Russia over Crimea and federalism within Ukraine are a mask designed to cover Obama’s true intentions, which are the smashing of the BRICS as a viable alternative to the neo-colonialist financial systems of the West and subsuming the economies of the BRICS to the whims of the United States and the ever-teetering European Union.
The G-8, which suspended Russia from membership, and the World Trade Organization, of which Russia is now a member, never had a thing to do with free trade and common economic policies. These contrivances, formed in the back rooms by the bankers of the Trilateral Commissions and Bilderberg Group, were always about unipolar domination of the world by a single superpower. Since the end of World War II and the collapse of the once-dominant British Empire, that superpower has been the United States.
Not only are the BRICS countries shedding their dependency on the U.S. dollar as a trading and reserve currency, thus making the U.S. fiat currency backed by the manipulative practices of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, even more worthless than it already is, but Russia and China are already trading in the ruble and the yuan, their respective currencies. There are plans for the embryonic Eurasian Economic Union, a counter to the bloated and corrupt European Union, to adopt a dollar- and euro-free monetary unit called the «altyn» by 2025. These plans have sent the Western globalists and bankers into nervous fits and, as a result, we see the buildup of U.S. and Western military forces on the Russian borders in Europe and in China’s waters in the Far East.
The neo-conservatives who dominate the policymaking apparatuses in Washington, London, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin have concocted a risky method to smash the BRICS. What U.S. intelligence and its Western counterparts are planning for the BRICS is the very same thing that the West accuses Russia of doing in Ukraine: financing separatist groups with the intent of peeling away at the national integrity of the BRICS nations. As far as Western intelligence agencies are concerned, the BRICS have two choices: remain committed to the BRICS as an alternative to Western domination and face the breakup of their nation-states or throw in the towel and agree to surrender themselves to the dictates of the Central Intelligence Agency, the centurions for Wall Street, and the «company’s» junior partners in London, Paris, and Berlin.
As the G7 and EU tighten the sanctions screws on Russia, there is renewed talk about the status of the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, a special economic zone of Russia nestled between two NATO countries, Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad, once part of Germany’s eastern province of East Prussia, is the home to Russia’s Baltic fleet. There are elements within Germany and NATO that would like to see Russia not only lose its Black Sea fleet headquarters in Crimea but its Baltic Sea fleet in Kaliningrad.
The Baltic Times, which adheres to the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/George Soros/CIA line of thinking, has already published an article suggesting that NATO blockade Kaliningrad, or Konigsberg as it is increasingly being called in the Western propaganda media, unless Russia withdraws from Crimea. The following was published on the Baltic Times website on April 28: «Why not block Kaliningrad from the Baltic Sea and station troops around its entire border? This would cut off Kaliningrad from Russia giving NATO a strong card to play in demanding that the Crimea be returned to the Ukraine and to halt all Russian efforts to invade the east of the country». Al Jazeera, a «news» network dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood princely potentates if Qatar, put forth the notion that the West could seek the return of Kaliningrad to Germany by invalidating the ters of the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 signed between the leaders of the USSR, the United States, and Great Britain.
Kaliningrad is not the only part of the Russian Federation being eyed by NATO imperialists and their fellow travelers in countries like Finland and Turkey. The Finns are looking at Karelia, which it lost to the USSR after Finland allied with Nazi Germany. The pan-Turkic nationalists in Turkey are closely watching events in the Caucasus majority Muslim autonomous republics, as well as deep interior republics like Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. There is no doubt that pan-Turkic nationalists have long provided weapons and other support to Chechen, Dagestani, Ingush, and other Muslim terrorist groups operating in the Caucasus region of Russia.
Meanwhile, in Asia, it was no coincidence that Obama’s war dance through Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Malaysia was coupled with another Uighur Muslim terrorist attack in China’s majority Muslim Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region. Uighur terrorists, who receive financing from the CIA and propaganda support from the Uighur service of Radio Free Asia, stabbed railway passengers at the train station in the region’s capital of Urumqi. The terrorists set off a bomb between the railway station and a bus stop, killing three and wounding at least 80. In March, a similar slashing attack at a rail station in Yunnan province in southern China killed 29. The Urumqi attack followed by a few hours the visit of President Xi Jinping to the Xinjiang region.
There is no doubt that the CIA, and Obama, who is merely a puppet, as were his mother, stepfather, and maternal grandparents, for the intelligence agency, are carrying out a scheme to break the backs of the BRICS members by supporting separatists and irredentists within each of the BRICS states.
India, with its multitude of ethnic groups, religions, and languages, has always been a favorite target for CIA operations to support secessionists. CIA operations have concentrated on Sikhs in Punjab, Muslims in Kashmir, and Tamils in southern India.
In South Africa, the Cape Party, a new party, the funding for which is murky at beast, is demanding that the South African Western Cape province become the Cape Republic. The party has petitioned the United Nations’ Committee of 24 to declare the province a non-self-governing territory of South Africa, eligible for independence. If South African intelligence were to examine this party’s financing, the fingerprints of the CIA would be clearly identifiable.
After U.S. relations with Brazil soured after revelations of U.S. National Security Agency spying on President Dilma Rousseff and senior Brazilian officials, there have been renewed calls for independence for three southern Brazilian states, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Parana as the «Republic of the Pampas». The movement gained popularity among white Europeans in the three states in the early 1990s, particularly among descendants of German and Jewish immigrants holding racist views, but died off after true opposition leaders came to power in Brazil. However, with U.S. Brazilian relations at an all-time low and U.S. hostility toward BRICS, the secessionists are reappearing with new impetus.
By trying the smash BRICS, Washington and its lackeys are playing with fire. And, keeping in mind that Russia, China, and India are nuclear weapons powers, and Brazil is reportedly emerging as one, the West is playing «Russian roulette» with a nuclear trigger.
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The Titanic in comparison to a modern day cruise liner.
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Until
next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions
"They
that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.”
(Psalm
107:23-24)
