“For in those days the sons of men began to trespass against God, and to transgress the commandments which he had commanded to Adam, to be fruitful and multiply in the earth. And some of the sons of men caused their wives to drink a draught that would render them barren, in order that they might retain their figures and whereby their beautiful appearance might not fade.
(Jashur 2:19-20)
Transgress The Commandments

***

LifeNews.com

Franklin Graham Slams Religious Leaders Blessing an Abortion Clinic: “That’s Like Blessing Auschwitz”

MICAIAH BILGER NOV 2, 2018 | 5:33PM WASHINGTON, DC

Evangelical Christian leader Franklin Graham boldly condemned pastors this week who are leading a “blessing” of a Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Ohio.

Graham compared the religious service to pastors standing outside a Nazi concentration camp and “blessing the murder of innocent Jews,” CNS News reports.

The sacrilegious “blessing” will take place Nov. 9 at the Planned Parenthood in Columbus, Ohio where unborn babies are legally killed in abortions. The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is organizing it.

Graham, the son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, responded to news of the event in a Facebook post Oct. 29.

“Shame on these so-called faith leaders who are ‘blessing’ an abortion clinic. Can you believe that? In reality, they are ‘blessing’ murder,” he wrote. “They are blessing actions that are against the laws of God.”

“That would be like priests standing outside the gas chambers at Auschwitz and blessing the murder of innocent Jews. Such evil,” Graham continued.

Planned Parenthood’s annual reports indicate it is the largest abortion provider in the United States. Every year, about 320,000 unborn babies are aborted at Planned Parenthood facilities.

Graham said religious leaders who support its destructive abortion practices are the false teachers who the Apostle Paul preached about in the Bible.

“Many times the Apostle Paul spoke out against false teachers who uttered lies,” he wrote. “And leading people to believe that murdering babies is something God would condone is an outright lie and could ultimately lead them to Hell.

“The Word of God says, ‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness…’ (Isaiah 5:20),” Graham wrote.

The pro-abortion “blessing” service appears to be a response to the closing ceremony of the 40 Days for Life campaign. The event is called “Holy Ground: Blessing the Sacred Space of Decision.”

An event description reads:

During this clinic blessing, participants will gather with local faith leaders and guests to ask for God’s blessing upon Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s East Columbus Surgical facility, the abortion providers and staff, and all those who pass through the center.

In celebration of conscience and moral decision making, this event will include interfaith blessings, prayers, and testimonies about receiving and providing abortion care. This clinic blessing will create space for progressive voices of faith to speak boldly in support of comprehensive reproductive health care, especially abortion.

This is not the first time religious leaders will have blessed an abortion clinic. It is a practice that has occurred with more regularity in recent years.

***

MailOnline

Thousands of Islamists take to the streets of Pakistan to demand Christian mother cleared of blasphemy is BEHEADED

• Asia Bibi was arrested in 2009 on charges of insulting Islam's prophet

• Her conviction was overturned last week and she was released today

• Demonstrators marched in city of Karachi to protest her acquittal

By AFP and CHARLIE MOORE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 21:53, 7 November 2018 | UPDATED: 16:32, 8 November 2018

Protesters: Thousands of hardline Muslims today demanded a Christian mother cleared of blasphemy gets beheaded

Article and photos

***

EXPRESS

ISIS in threat to assassinate POPE - 'Don't think you are safe from attack'

AN ISIS-supporting media group has threatened to assassinate the Pope - a warning which has sparked fears of violence against the Vatican and Catholic Church.

October 31, 2018

Extremist media group Al-Abd Al-Faqir has twice issued threats within the last week in a push for violence during the upcoming Christmas holiday season.

The media group released online images threatening grenade attacks against the Pope.

In the most recent depiction, a photo of Pope Francis from his visit to Auschwitz in 2016 is used.

A gunman has his weapon pointed at the Pope with while wearing an ISIS wristband.

The text “Don’t think you are away from our attacks” in on the image.

Last year, another pro-ISIS group depicted a van full of weapons heading towards the Vatican and vowing “Christmas blood”.

Wafa Media foundation also released an image “beheading” Pope Francis and another one of a lone jihadist with a backpack, grenade and rile at St Peter’s Square.

The message on the image told jihadists that “the crusaders’ feast is approaching”.

Pope Francis has faced threats of assassination by ISIS (Image: Al-Abd Al-Faqir Media Foundation)

It continued without punctuation: “Their convoys will crowd itself in front of you prepare and plan for them show them the meaning of terrorism kill them and do not hold back with your blood the reward is paradise and let them know that you are from an ummah [Muslim community] where mountains bow down to we will not forget our revenge for every drop of blood that they have shed we will not exclude the young, elderly or women you are all in the crosshairs of our arrows and what is about to come is more even worse."

The Vatican has admitted it is a target for crazed jihadis due to its religious links.

Any attack would send shivers across the globe.

The threats come as ramming up security had been discussed over the past few years.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin said in 2015 the Vatican was considering whether to ramp up security.

He said: "The Vatican could be a target because of its religious significance.

"We are capable of increasing the level of security in the Vatican and the surrounding area.

"But we will not let ourselves be paralysed by fear."

***

MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE

Move Over Ouija Board – the SoulPhone is Here

Brett Tingley

October 27, 2018

The science fiction writers of the late 19th and early 20th century imagined a future in which people relied on technology for everything. Yes, that means everything. Aside from remembering phone numbers for us and selling our innermost private thoughts to our new corporate overlords, bless their unending wisdom and benevolence, the technologies of the digital age are beginning to hint at the possibility that humanity might soon be able to create new technological forms of immortality or the afterlife.

In some ways, this all began with the photograph or even the portrait; these relatively recent inventions have allowed us to see our loved ones’ faces long after they pass. Some people aren’t content with gazing at a static two-dimensional image, though. Some people want to talk to and interact with a creepy digital ghost of their dead grandfather in order to make up for sticking him in that awful retirement home. Whatever the reasons are, more and more developers are turning to technology in the attempt to bring their deceased loved ones back to life.

The latest technology firm to promise a digital connection to the dead is the SoulPhone Foundation, an organization dedicated to researching methods of connecting individuals with the disembodied consciousnesses of the departed. According to the SoulPhone Foundation website, evidence that this may be possible is suggested by a variety of paranormal phenomena and fringe sciences like near death experiences, out of body experiences, extraordinary mental abilities, remote viewing, spontaneous healings, transcendent experiences, synchronicities, psychic abilities, mediumship, and other phenomena. The SoulPhone Foundation claims that these phenomena suggest that a separate reality might exist just beyond the edges of our perception, a reality inhabited by spirits or disembodied consciousnesses:

This larger reality demonstrates the very real possibility of the survival of consciousness beyond bodily death. Not only that, but, communications with this consciousness is possible. How can this be? While some of the underlying mechanisms are unclear at this time, it would appear that the brain may function like a “filter / receiver of consciousness” much as a television set is a receiver for a signal created and transmitted from a distant location.

The foundation’s immediate goal is to develop a “Soul Keyboard” allowing individuals to ask simple yes/no questions to spirits existing in this hidden reality. According to their website, the foundation believe this will be possible within two years; no date on the SoulPhone yet.

One of the foundation’s founders, clinical psychologist and author Mark Pitstick, is currently on a press tour to share what they’re calling their “Wright Brothers moment:” anomalous images of “post-material persons” appearing in single frames of high-speed footage taken during experiments with these technologies. The SoulPhone foundation says these frames prove that their concepts work and plans to submit their findings for peer review. Will technological gizmos eventually prove the existence of another layer of reality and/or the spirit plane?

***

BREAKINGISRAELNEWS

Is South America Turning to the Third Temple To Solve Their Problems?

By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz

“Behold, the coastlands await me, With ships of Tarshish in the lead, To bring your sons from afar, And their silver and gold as well — For the name of Hashem your God, For the Holy One of Yisrael, who has glorified you.” Isaiah 60:14 (The Israel Bible™)

Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. (Credit: Agencia O Globo)

Brazil’s election of Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing president, highlights a significant shift in thought, moving away from left-wing socialism while unabashedly embracing an approach to Christianity that supports Israel. It may be that this marks the beginning of the Third Temple, which some believe will be initiated in South America in a process that has already begun.

A former Captain in Brazil’s army, Bolsonaro entered politics by getting elected city councillor in Rio de Janeiro by the Christian Democratic Party. Religion is a large part of Bolsonaro’s appeal. In a 2017 speech, Brazil’s new president stated, “God above everything. There is no such thing as this secular state. The state is Christian and the minority will have to change, if they can.”

A controversial figure, he won the second round of voting with 55 percent of the votes after failing to achieve the required 50 percent in the first round. So divisive was the election that Bolsonaro was stabbed in September at a campaign event.

His political positions are identical to those of right-wing politicians in the U.S. (pro-life, pro-gun, anti-same-sex marriage). He also opposes immigration, particularly from Haiti, Africa and the Middle East. He openly praises President Trump, to whom he has been compared by the media, and, like Trump, he is frequently lambasted in the media for his off the cuff remarks.

Bolsonaro’s emulation of Trump led him to make a campaign promise three months ago that, if elected, he will transfer his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. And similar to Trump’s closing of the PLO Mission in Washington DC, Bolsonaro also vowed at the time to close the PLO’s office in his country’s capital.

Though these decisions seem purely political, they may have motives deeply grounded in visions of the Third Temple. Under the previous Brazilian administration in February 2016, the Palestinian Authority inaugurated its embassy in Sao Paulo. The modest building had a striking design: an octagon, the structure was topped with a gold dome. The architecture bore an unmistakable message: the PA’s mission in Brazil was to lay claim to the Temple Mount.

The message was not lost on Brazilians who are no strangers to Temple Mount imagery. Sao Paulo is home to a church built as a four-times larger-than-life $300 million model of Solomon’s Temple that can seat 10,000 worshipers.

If the recent election signals a shift in Brazilian politics towards Israel, it could be that the body best poised to connect with the Bolsanaro’s administration is not the Israeli government but, rather, the nascent Sanhedrin.

Rabbi Weiss emphasized that a pre-Third Temple connection to South America appears in prophecy as the first stage in establishing a Third Temple.

“With ships of Tarshish in the lead, To bring your sons from afar, And their silver and gold as well — For the name of Hashem your God, For the Holy One of Yisrael, who has glorified you. Aliens shall rebuild your walls, Their kings shall wait upon you…” Isaiah 60:9-10

Rabbi Weiss explained that Tarshish is Spain, or the Spanish speaking world.

“The first ones to come and recognize Jerusalem for the purposes of the Messiah and the Third Temple are the Spanish speakers,” Rabbi Weiss said. He noted that later in the chapter, the prophet referred to them in terms that seemed to describe the Spanish Inquisition.
“Bowing before you, shall come The children of those who tormented you; Prostrate at the soles of your feet Shall be all those who reviled you; And you shall be called “City of Hashem, Tzion of the Holy One of Yisrael.” Isaiah 60:14

“The New World was opened up to Spain and Portugal as a result of the Inquisition by Christopher Columbus, who was a descendant of Anousim (Jews forcibly converted to Christianity),” Rabbi Weiss said. “This aid the descendants of the Inquisitors will give to build the Third Temple is their tshuva (repentance) for what they did during the Inquisition.”

The Sanhedrin is already working to bring about this final tikkun (fixing) to open the way for South America to take their place in building the Third Temple. In September, the Sanhedrin hosted the Creation Concert, inviting all the nations of the world to come and praise God in Jerusalem. As part of the concert, the Sanhedrin invited the nations to establish a new international body based on the Bible. On hand were representatives from Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico who all signed a declaration of intent to play their prophetic role in helping Israel bring about the Third Temple.

This opened up relations between the Sanhedrin and those countries which are ongoing. Last month, the Sanhedrin sent a letter to Guatemala on the occasion of their national Independence Day, praising them for being the first nation to accept their prophetic role.

“We now pray that all of the lands in which Spanish and Portuguese are spoken will become connected with the return to Zion, the physical and spiritual repentance and return,” the letter read. “Among your people are those of our brethren, members of the Ten Lost Tribes of Jews who escaped the Inquisition and whose descendants live in your lands. Also the tribes that have undergone strict ritual conversion like an entire Peruvian tribe which immigrated to Israel and now live full Jewish lives in Judea and Samaria.”

These prophecies relate directly to you. They speak to you, of you, to show that you have been chosen as pioneers and groomsmen to this entire prophetic awakening.

“We offer our blessings for great success for your country in responding to this divine wish, and for a just and true peace among all of your peoples and your neighboring countries. We pray that you will make annual pilgrimages to Israel to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.”

“As for all 70 Nations from around the world, just as your hearts are turned toward the God of Israel and His people and the Land of Israel and His Temple, God will uplift them to their proper place with the laws of the Bible.”

“We call on you to establish an organization of states in Jerusalem, 70 states, that will administer justice and righteousness together with the Sanhedrin to fulfill the saying “from Zion will emerge the Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem.”

The letter was signed by Rabbi Zvi Idan, President of the Sanhedrin, Rabbi Joel Schwartz, Leader of the Court for the Sons of Noah, Rabbi Dov Stein, Secretary of the Sanhedrin, and the Spokesmen of the Sanhedrin, Rabbi Yishai Ba’abad and Prof. Hillel Weiss.

***

CBN NEWS

Why Implanted Microchips in Humans Could Go Mainstream Sooner than Later

Dale Hurd

October 23, 2018

Experts admit that, so far, getting humans to adopt microchip implants has been a tough sell. Many Christians reject them because of concern they could be a prelude to "the mark of the Beast" which Revelation chapter 13 says will be "a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads."

But the marketing "tipping point" for implantable chips, writes The Atlantic, will come "when they become so useful they're hard to refuse; when their benefits outweigh our anxieties about them. It could happen sooner than you think."

Right now, thousands of people in countries like Germany and Sweden have already opted to get chipped for easier financial transactions. Sven Becker, head of "I am Robot," tells Euronews that 2,000 to 3,500 people in Germany have implanted a microchip under their skin "as a substitute for key cards to the gym, office, and house."

But some believe medical and health monitoring features will be what takes implanted chips mainstream.

Kayla Heffernan, a researcher in the department of computing and information systems at the University of Melbourne's School of Engineering, told The Atlantic people are already used to putting devices in their bodies.

"Pacemakers are routine surgery. Plastic surgery is less taboo now," Heffernan said. "Hundreds of thousands of American bodies now contain cochlear implants, IUDs, nerve stimulators, artificial joints, implantable birth-control rods, and beyond. So as we've become more comfortable with this, 'insertables' become more acceptable."

In Sweden, a pioneer in what's known as "biohacking (adding cybernetic devices to living things)", as many as 4,000 people have implanted microchips, usually for convenience features, essentially turning their hands into contact-less credit cards, key cards, and even railcards. The microchips are injected into the back of the hand between the thumb and index finger.

But more people than just Christians oppose the biohacking trend. The website Futurism calls it a "digital security nightmare."

Besides being vulnerable to hackers, a chip implanted in your body means, "They could track where you are, how long you take for lunch every day, or how many times you went to the bathroom if the chip were scanned by a reader," Futurism writes. "And opting out of this kind of data collection is a lot more convoluted when you've got a chip implanted in your bodily tissues. If you want to go off the grid in even the smallest way, you can leave your wallet at home, but removing a microchip requires a bit more, uh, effort."

***

RT

Newsroom of the future? Chinese TV unveils unnerving ‘AI anchors’ (VIDEO)

November 8, 2018

© Xinhua News Agency / Sogou

In a bold move that’s as creepy as it is impressive, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua has unveiled its new ‘AI news anchors’ which will be broadcasting across the company’s TV and web platforms.

File footage of human anchor Zhang Zhao forms the base layer over which animated mouths and other facial features are placed to produce twin AI anchors; one Chinese-speaking and the other catering to English-speaking audiences.

The robo-presenters were created in collaboration with a search engine company called Sogou. The AI will have “endless outputs,” Xinhua says, given that they can “work 24 hours a day on its official website and various social media platforms” – provided that a human editor can supply them with the copy, that is.

Xinhua claims that its AI anchors “can read texts as naturally as a professional news anchor,” however their clearly artificial and heavily synthesized voices can sometimes struggle with the nuances of pronunciation.

The anchors’ facial expressions are also somewhat limited (and mildly unsettling) but it’s still early days. While the move could be seen as a threat to human journalists’ jobs, some appear to welcome the innovation.

The AI anchors are the latest in an ongoing trend towards global digitization across several industries, outside of news, given that we already have the holographic pop star Hatsune Miku, not to mention the equally bizarre CGI Instagram models Bermuda and Lil Miquela.

Strange Opening In Antarctic Mountainside With Metal Cove

Exclusive To Rense.com

November 6, 2018

Photos

AMMC

ALT-MARKET.COM

The Economy Does Not Care Who Won The Midterm Elections

Brandon Smith

November 7, 2018

Over the past few weeks I received numerous requests from readers to publish my predictions on the outcome of the midterm elections, but I did not do so for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I view the election process very differently from many people. I do not see it as legitimate in the slightest, therefore my predictions of the past have been based not on voter turnouts, polls or any other such nonsense. Elections are molded events, framed under the false pretense that the Left/Right paradigm in politics is real. As far as the upper echelons of politics are concerned, the paradigm is completely theatrical.

To be sure, the average American does lean either “left” or “right” on the political spectrum. Such divisions are a natural part of social discourse. However, political theater is designed in most cases to drive citizens away from centrally shared principles of freedom and equal opportunity (not equal outcome) and push them to the far ends of the spectrum toward extremism and zealotry. And to be clear, there is no “good” form of zealotry.

Zealots are not self-aware, and they never subject their own positions to scrutiny. They operate on pure assumption that they are divinely correct in everything they do, and anyone who disagrees with them, even in the slightest, is an enemy that must be destroyed by any means necessary. Zealotry is the root of human atrocity. Zealots are a tidal wave of war and genocide. They are a cancer on the soul of mankind.

Certain groups of people within the establishment, namely globalists that desire total centralized control of every aspect of economy and society, prefer that the public remain as radicalized and divided as possible. For them, zealotry is an asset.

To pursue this goal, they purchase allegiance from politicians through various means, including financial favors, media favors and campaign contributions. There are very few people left in politics that are not part of “the club.” Both Democrat and Republican leaders are essentially on the same side — the globalist side. They attack each other with rhetoric, but when it comes down to actual policy and action, they are all very similar.

The outcome of elections is therefore erroneous in the long term. Their only purpose is to manipulate public psychology to a certain reactionary end game.

When I predicted the election of Donald Trump in 2016 many months before voting commenced, I did so based on which election outcome better served the interests of globalists. I concluded with the highest certainty that Donald Trump would “win” based on the same premise that drove me to predict the success of the Brexit vote in the U.K.; that premise being that the globalists would allow “populists” (conservatives) to gain an illusory foothold on political power, only to then collapse the global economy on their heads and blame them for the disaster.

At the time it was unclear whether Trump would play along with the globalist narrative of conservatives as “selfish bumbling villains.” Today, with his consistent relationships with banking elites and globalist think-tank members, it is obvious that Trump intends to play the role he has been given. Trump’s policy actions the past two years indicate that he is following a model very similar to the one Republican President Herbert Hoover used just before the crash of 1929. Trump was a perfect choice for the globalists.

So, the question I had to ask in terms of the midterm elections is, what outcome best serves globalist interests this time? The only conclusion I could come to in this instance was — it didn't matter who wins the midterms. The globalists will get their economic crash regardless and conservatives will still be blamed.

The ultimate outcome turned out to be mixed, with Democrats taking the House and Republicans holding the Senate. The assertion in the mainstream being that this will result in "political gridlock". In terms of stock markets, the reaction is not surprisingly euphoric, as it has been not long after almost every election event. But there are many that assume this is a euphoria that will last. This is a narrow view of the situation that ignores economic reality.

It is certainly possible that equities will sustain a jump on the news of a Republican win, but I see this as a very limited event, lasting perhaps one or two weeks. In the long run as December approaches, stocks and every other sector of the economy will continue accelerated declines seen in October.

Here are the facts:

New home sales, an indicator highly valued by mainstream economists, has been in decline for the past year, hitting two-year lows in September.

This has come as a surprise to many mainstream analysts because the story thus far has been that the U.S. is in advanced recovery which should continue the supposed rejuvenation of the housing market. Alternative economists will give you the real story on home sales, though.

The housing “boom” hailed in the mainstream over the past few years was a farce driven primarily by corporate behemoths like Blackstone. Companies buying up distressed properties across the U.S. using cheap loans and bailouts through the Federal Reserve and turning them into rentals hardly constitutes a “recovery” in housing.

Regular homebuyers have also enjoyed artificially low mortgage rates for many years. But now, mortgage costs are spiking as the Fed raises interest rates, and corporate debt is becoming more expensive, making it less profitable for companies to continue vacuuming up properties. Add to this the fact that the Fed is now dumping Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) from its balance sheet. These are the same securities that constituted a “toxic” influence that led to the mortgage and derivatives bubble. It is hard to say exactly what the effects will be as they add to existing ARM-style mortgages and derivatives already on the market, but I suspect the result will be destabilizing.

Auto sales, another fundamental indicator used in the mainstream as a signal for economic health, is also failing recently. U.S. auto sales plunged in September from 11 percent to 25 percent depending on the company and make of vehicle. While the mainstream media argues this massive year-over-year decline was due to destructive hurricanes in 2017 creating overt demand, the truth is that the average monthly payment on new vehicles has rocketed to over $525 and interest rates rise due to the Federal Reserve.

Car sales, new and used, have thrived in recent years in most part because of artificially low rates and ARM-like loans to people who cannot afford them. Much like the mortgage bubble in 2008, the auto bubble is set to implode as car payments become too expensive for the average buyer and defaults increase.

The US budget deficit climbed to six year highs under Donald Trump's watch in 2018 as fiscal spending skyrockets. Conservatives hoping for budget responsibility and reduced government spending are given a rude awakening once again, as Republicans and Democrats and Trump ALL seek bigger government. This is hardly gridlock. In fact, there has been resounding unity in Washington for ever increasing power, and ever increasing costs.

The trade deficit, which was supposed to decline aggressively in the face of Trump's trade war, has actually climbed to record highs with China (among other nations). I have heard claims that the outcome of the midterms will force Trump to end the trade war because he is no longer receiving backing from the Federal Reserve or Congress. The trade war will not stop. It provides perfect cover for central banks as they continue to remove artificial support from the overall economy.

Perhaps the biggest factor in economic decline in the U.S. will be corporate debt, as mentioned earlier. Corporate debt has jumped to record highs not seen since 2008, with debt-to-cash levels in 2017 hitting lows of 12 percent. Meaning, on average for every $1 of cash a company has in reserve it owes $8 in debt.

How is all this debt being generated? It’s all about stock buybacks. In 2018, U.S. corporations increased spending on stock buybacks by 48%, while only increasing spending on development by 19%. Meaning, corporations are spending far more capital, and borrowing far more money, just to keep their stock prices artificially propped up than they are spending money to invest in future growth.

For almost a decade stock markets have been dependent on two pillars: near zero interest rates and asset purchases by the Fed. Stock buybacks are reliant on low rates and the corporate ability to borrow essentially free money, which they then cycle into equities to buy up shares, reducing the amount of existing shares on the market and thereby increasing the value of the remaining shares through a form of legal manipulation.

But as the Fed raises rates and stops acting as the buyer of last resort, corporate borrowing becomes more expensive and buybacks will decline. In fact, the last half of 2018 shows a marked drop in announced buybacks, as the apparent peak in July fades. As December approaches, the Fed is set to match interest rates with their official inflation rate, or the "neutral rate". This is something that has not been done for decades.

I believe stock buybacks will falter at this time, as the cost of the exorbitant debt needed to continue propping up stocks will become too high.

In 2016, globalists needed a “conservative” president to sit in the Oval Office as the Federal Reserve pulled the plug on artificial economic life support by raising interest rates into the greatest corporate debt crisis since 2008. At this point, that program seems to be in full swing.

The midterms are now over, but it is important to understand that where economic consequences are concerned, the result would have been the same no matter who came out on top. It makes sense for the globalists to desire a dominant Republican party, for when they crash markets the blame would fall entirely on the heads of conservatives. On the other hand, it also makes sense for globalists to introduce a Democratic takeover of Congress, for they can continue to push citizens to further political extremes as the Left blames the Right for the financial crisis while the Right blames the Left for political interference.

In the meantime, the banking elites can simply blame the extreme political divide, wait until the crash runs its course and then sweep in after the dust settles to admonish the “capitalist structure,” barbaric nationalism, populism, etc. They will shake their fingers at all of us as if we should be ashamed and then offer their own solution to the disaster, which will surely include even more centralization and more power for the banking class.

The Fed will continue to raise rates and cut assets. The trade war will escalate. The housing market will continue to falter, auto markets will implode, and corporate debt will become a millstone on the neck of stock markets.

Economic function and repair are far beyond the scope of any political body to fix when the dysfunction reaches the point we are at today. To believe otherwise is foolhardy. To believe that the political elites actually want to fix the economy is even more foolhardy. The answer is not replacing one set of political puppets with another set of political puppets, but for regular people to begin localizing their own production and trade — to decouple from dependency on the existing system and start their own system. Only through this, and the removal of the globalist tumor from its position of power and influence, will anything ever change for the better.

***

RT

Pompeo warns of ‘severe, swift punishment’ & ‘painful business’ with Iran as sanctions reinstated

November 5, 2018

FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Cathal McNaughton

The US has reimposed sanctions on Iran, targeting the Islamic Republic’s energy, banking and shipping sectors. State Secretary Mike Pompeo warned of “swift punishment” for other countries doing business with Iran.

Monday’s sanctions are a reintroduction of penalties lifted under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The multilateral deal promised Iran sanctions relief in exchange for a pause on its nuclear weapons program. President Trump withdrew from the deal in May, and has since reimposed economic sanctions in several rounds.

The sanctions target 50 Iranian banks, 200 individuals, and vessels in Iran’s shipping and energy sectors, as well as one airline and 65 of its aircraft. Furthermore, Pompeo promised to mete out “swift punishment” to countries who defy the US’ anti-Iran sanctions.

“I promise you,” Pompeo said, “that doing business with Iran in defiance of our sanctions will ultimately be a much more painful business decision than pulling out of Iran.”

Pompeo boasted of the effects of sanctions on Iran’s oil revenue, which he said is down by over $2.5 billion since the first sanctions were reintroduced in May.

While 20 countries have already halted the importation on Iranian oil, the US will grant an exemption to eight countries, including China, Italy, Greece and South Korea and will allow these nations to continue to buy Iranian oil.

The exemption was the only conciliatory gesture in Pompeo’s short and aggressive announcement. In addition to warning other countries against doing business with the Islamic Republic, Pompeo directly warned Tehran that it could “act like a normal country, or see its economy crumble.”

The Trump administration’s strategy, Pompeo said, is to “fundamentally alter the behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leadership,” and to “convince the regime to abandon its current revolutionary course.”

Nobody within the administration has openly called for regime change in Tehran yet. However, aggressive sanctions are just one of the tools the US is deploying to bend Iran’s arm. In August, the State Department announced the creation of the Iran Action Group (IAG), which will support opposition forces within Iran; and National Security Advisor John Bolton promised that the US would do “other things” to force a “massive change in the regime’s behavior.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to continue to sell oil, and compared President Trump to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, against whom his country fought in the 1980s.

“Yesterday, Saddam was in front us, today Trump is front of us. There is no difference. We must resist and win,” he said, according to AP.

***

RT

Iran leaders will have to fall in line if 'they want their people to eat,' Pompeo says

November 9, 2018

© Reuters / Tasnim News Agency

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a BBC journalist that Iranian "leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat," dropping all pretense of caring about Iranians as he touted the latest harsh sanctions.

The BBC Persian reporter, Hadi Nili, attempts to ask Pompeo what will happen if the sanctions do not have their desired effect, but Pompeo repeatedly dodges the question, repeating that it is in Iran's "best interest" to curb its "destabilizing influence" and clinging to the soundbite that the country is the primary sponsor of world terrorism. Pompeo attempts to pin all regional ills on Iran and paints the Iranian government's aims as wholly at odds with those of the people.

But what if the sanctions end up hurting the people, Nili starts to ask. "No, they're not," says Pompeo, interrupting him.

Except they totally are, he all but admits a few minutes later – but it's OK, because it serves American goals:

And thus, Pompeo continues his predecessors' callous legacy of starving people in unfriendly nations and bragging about it. In January, Rex Tillerson spoke about North Korea "ghost ships" washing ashore in Japan, most of their crews dead after desperately going fishing without enough fuel for the return trip. "We are getting a lot of evidence that these [sanctions] are really starting to hurt," he told Condoleezza Rice, herself no slouch when it comes to disdaining the fate of civilians in war zones.

Because it isn't just hunger – US diplomats have a history of contempt for human life when it gets in the way of their political goals.

Hillary Clinton, serving as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, gleefully chortled after NATO-backed rebels toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2012: "We came, we saw, he died." Libya has since become a failed state where people are bought and sold in open slave markets, but this state of affairs is apparently preferable to an oil-rich nation dropping the petrodollar.

Madeleine Albright, who served as Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, famously told a 60 Minutes journalist that killing half a million Iraqi children through punishing sanctions was, indeed, "worth it" to achieve US foreign policy goals.

Regarding Iran, Pompeo's hollow-ringing references to "what the Iranian people want" conjure up last year's protests, which groups believed to be US-backed attempted to coopt into an Arab-Spring-style color revolution by chanting anti-regime slogans as Iranians demonstrated for economic justice. Having had their country overthrown by the US once before, in 1953, the Iranians are unlikely to fall for it twice, but that has not stopped Pompeo and the US from trying.

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Zero Hedge

Iran's Powerful Hardline Cleric Threatens To "Instantly" Create $400 Oil By Seizing Tankers

By Tyler Durden

November 4, 2018

Just ahead of U.S. sanctions on Iran set to snap back on Monday targeting primarily the energy, shipbuilding, shipping, and banking sectors, Iran's most prominent conservative cleric has announced that if oil exports are halted, Saudi tankers will be confiscated and Gulf countries attacked.

Powerful Shia cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda is the Friday Prayer leader in Mashhad, considered Iran's spiritual capital and among the holiest places in Shia Islam, and sits on the government's "Assembly of Experts" but has no formal government role or decision-making ability. However, he's a powerful leader and chief spiritual force behind Iran's conservative faction who has long been at odds with President Hassan Rouhani.

Iranian opposition sources report that Alamolhoda told his followers during his Friday prayer sermon:

If we reach a point that our oil is not exported, the Strait of Hormuz will be mined. Saudi oil tankers will be seized and regional countries will be leveled with Iranian missiles.

Prominent hardline cleric Ahmad Alamolhoda

The cleric is further reported to have declared that Iran has the power to "instantly" create conditions for $400 a barrel oil prices if it decides to act in the Persian Gulf.

He said as reported in regional opposition media:

If Iran decides, a single drop of this region's oil will not be exported and in 90 minutes all Persian Gulf countries will be destroyed. The UAE and Saudi Arabia will be destroyed in 60 minutes. After 90 minutes the U.S. will have nothing in this country. And we haven't even started with Israel. Beware of the day we go after Israel, too. That's why they want us to round up our missiles.

Though the hardline cleric's rhetoric is often of this fiery tone and threat-laden in nature, it articulates the position of conservative critics who've long pointed out that President Rouhani's risk of entering a deal with the West (the 2015 JCPOA) has utterly failed.

Meanwhile, with less than 24 hours to go before the next and fiercest round of sanctions come back into force, thousands of demonstrators appeared on the streets of Iran holding anti-American banners and chanting "down with the US". Iranian media reported that similar demonstrations were held in multiple cities across the country.

November 4 marks 39 years since the 1979 US embassy takeover after which the Shia Islamic revolution held 52 American staff and Marines hostage for 444 days. In the streets of Iran people could be seen burning effigies of Trump, and torching American and Israeli flags, and even burning dollars.

White House officials have openly declared that Washington is waging "economic war" against Iran, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying on Friday, "The administration's efforts to change Iranian behavior are far broader, far deeper." Hinting that it's part of a broader package that includes covert regime change efforts, he said further, "There are many other lines of effort," and added, "We're simply focused on this line of effort today because of the significance of November 5th."

It will be interesting to see if economic war quickly escalates into a confrontation in the Persian Gulf, something Iran's IRGC has said could be coming many times before. However, as Tehran tries to cling to a lifeline in the form of European countries willing to find ways to circumvent the U.S.-led sanctions, it is unlikely that the Rouhani government would ever give the order - yet those IRGC operatives loyal to the hardline clerics might.

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MIDDLE EAST EYE

How US sanctions on Iran could herald a profound global power shift

In the medium term, the US will lose influence as Iran gains confidence; in the worst case scenario, there will be a war whose consequences will be incalculable

Peter Oborne

November 5, 2018

On Monday, the US will ratchet up its brutal and merciless economic war against Iran, raising sanctions to a new level. The Trump administration has said its goal is to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero, although waivers were being negotiated with some countries.

Such a move could bankrupt Iran and destroy the government’s ability to deliver public services, fomenting popular rebellion.

John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, has been clear about the logic behind this: he wants to install a new government friendly to the US. He spelled out these plans to the opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) at a Paris conference last year, although he has subsequently backtracked, saying regime change is “not American policy”.

Beset by contradictions

The US is not simply intent on waging an economic war, but also wants to build up a military and strategic coalition against Iran. This seems to have been the most important item on the agenda of last week’s Manama dialogue in Bahrain, where US Defence Secretary James Mattis took aim at Iran.

Mattis is keen on the creation of a what amounts to an Arab NATO built around a regional network of Sunni Arab states in the shape of the emerging Middle East Strategic Alliance, potentially including Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel. The primary outside backers would be the US, France and Britain.

But this twin-pronged military-economic strategy is doomed to failure, and will likely end in humiliation for the US. In the medium term, it will backfire; the US and its allies will lose influence, while Iran will gain confidence and power. In the worst case scenario, it will result in a war whose consequences will be incalculable.

For starters, Trump’s sanctions policy is beset by contradictions. It will not and cannot work, because the US will be unable to isolate Iran in the way it hopes to.

The problem was set out clearly in an excellent article by Gardiner Harris in the New York Times earlier this week, which noted that China and India, the largest buyers of Iranian oil, will continue to make substantial purchases. Turkey and Russia are likely to do the same, which is not much of a surprise.

Epic miscalculation

Much more remarkable, France and Germany, as well as Britain, have expressed their intention to continue to do business with Iran in defiance of US will. They are looking at the creation of a “special purpose vehicle” that would enable them to continue trading with Iran independently of the US dollar.

The case of China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, is yet more important. While it is true that two large state Chinese oil companies have halted purchases from Iran, China is virtually certain to continue purchasing large amounts of oil.

The option is open to Trump to raise the stakes and punish China through sanctions or other means, but even he likely lacks the appetite to open up an economic war on a second front.

The same consideration applies to Narendra Modi’s India, which has infuriated the US by continuing to buy Iranian oil. Does Trump truly want to turn India into an enemy?

All of this means that the Trump administration has made an epic miscalculation. Trump thinks that he can take the international community with him as he embarks on his economic war against Iran. He can’t - and this spells mortal danger for the US. Trump is playing for very high stakes; if he loses, much of the global power of the US will collapse.

Weakening financial muscle

This is because over the last few decades, successive US presidents have used the reserve currency status of the US dollar as a weapon to isolate the country’s enemies and to enforce its will. In this way, it has been able to strike terror in its enemies and to reward allies.

This financial muscle has been a far more potent tool than military might. If Trump fails in his economic war against Iran - and I believe he will - it will signal to the world that the dollar can no longer be used as a foreign policy weapon.

Sixty years ago, Britain’s humiliation over Suez marked the moment when we could no longer exert our muscle across the Middle East. If Trump fails on Iran, the cry will go round the chanceries of the region that the US is a paper tiger.

We would therefore see the end of US global hegemony and the emergence of rival economic areas, with the power and reach to operate independently of US economic pressure.

One would be based around Shanghai. This is already in the process of formation, and on a trip to Pakistan last week, I was intrigued to hear leading public intellectuals speculating that the G7 group of leading economic nations - hitherto a private fiefdom of the United States - could soon break into two. A second sphere could be erected around the eurozone and a third confined to the US, Latin America, a handful of US dependencies and perhaps the UK.

Increasing isolation

In this new world, it is by no means obvious that the US would be widely viewed as a force for global stability. This is already obvious in the Middle East, where the US caused chaos with the invasion of Iraq and turned its back on the nuclear deal with Iran.

It is the US ally, Saudi Arabia, that has been accused over many years as being the source of jihadi movements that have created mayhem across the globe. It is primarily Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies - backed by the US and Britain - that have brought about the humanitarian calamity in Yemen. And that is before we come to the terrible murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

There are many problems with Iran. It, too, has a record of conducting assassinations abroad and repression at home. Nevertheless, in a region that has suffered chaos in recent years, this 3,000-year-old state looks more like a source of stability, and Trump’s America - untrustworthy and increasingly isolated - a force for chaos.

We may be about to see a power shift of profound consequences. Though it will start in the Middle East, its ripples will swiftly spread across the globe.

-Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in 2017 and was named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He also was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran.

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RT

Millions in Yemen are starving and UK, US & France are ‘behind this’ – Oxfam representative to RT

November 6, 2018

FILE PHOTO A man receives food ration from a charity food distribution in Sanaa, Yemen © Reuters / Khaled Abdullah

The US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war,” an Oxfam representative told RT, urging London to stop beefing up Saudi Arabia’s military.

“We have 14 million people starving,” Richard Stanforth, Oxfam UK’s regional policy officer for the Middle East, said.

Stanforth blamed the British government in particular, saying that London should stop its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is accaused of targeting food supplies and even no-strike locations in Yemen.

“We’ve seen attacks on water infrastructure, on hospitals, warehouses of food. This pattern is continuing. Certainly, it’s the airstrikes that are killing most civilians,” he said.

Stanforth says Riyadh’s bombing is not sparing humanitarian sites either… including that of Oxfam. Saudi Arabia is “aware of many of these locations” and along with the UAE, it is still hitting them, he added.

Western states have been widely criticized by rights groups for their continued arms sales to Riyadh. However, turning the tide on multibillion-dollar deals may not be so easy.

Following the killing of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, US President Donald Trump issued strong words to Riyadh. He was not prepared, however, to cancel a $400 billion arms deal, saying there are other ways to “punish” America’s Middle East ally.

Trump’s position was echoed by the attitude of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, who said it is “very difficult” (or… costly, to be precise) to get out of the arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

***

PRESSTV

Working with Saudis against Iran more important than Khashoggi case: Netanyahu

November 3, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem al-Quds office on September 5, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says ongoing cooperation with Saudi Arabia against Iran is a greater priority and a larger problem than Riyadh’s “horrendous” murder of its critic Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.

Netanyahu made the remarks on Friday as his first public reaction to the premeditated assassination of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

“What happened at the Istanbul consulate was horrendous and it should be duly dealt with. But at the same time, it is very important for the stability of the region and the world that Saudi Arabia remain stable,” the Israeli premier said in Sofia, Bulgaria.

He referred to Iran as “a larger problem” compared with the assassination of Khashoggi, and called for finding a way to deal with the case which does not disrupt cooperation with Saudi Arabia against Iran.

The remarks came shortly after The Washington Post revealed on Thursday that Netanyahu has asked US President Donald Trump to continue supporting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite accusations that he ordered a hit job on Khashoggi last month.

The Israeli PM had asked top US officials recently not to abandon their support for bin Salman over the killing of Khashoggi, according to multiple reports.

According to The Washington Post, Netanyahu has specifically told the White House that the crown prince is a key strategic partner and a linchpin of the US-Israeli front against Iran's regional influence.

Later on Thursday, it was also reported that bin Salman had met with a delegation of pro-Israeli advocates in Riyadh, led by Joel C. Rosenberg, a dual US-Israeli author and activist who runs the Jashua Fund pro-Israeli charity.

Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem al-Quds, was also among the participants of the meeting.

In his Friday comments in Bulgaria, Netanyahu said the Khashoggi case should not distract the world from ensuring that Iran does not continue what he called “malign activities it has been engaged in over the last few weeks in Europe.”

“Blocking Iran is at the top of our agenda for security, not merely for Israel but I believe for Europe and the world as well,” he added.

Netanyahu’s comments alluded to the accusations leveled against the Islamic Republic regarding two alleged assassination and bombing plots in France and Denmark, which Iran calls ‘false flags’ launched by the Israeli spy agency.

“We have helped uncover two terrorist attacks — one in Paris, and the other one in Copenhagen, organized by the Iranian secret service,” Netanyahu claimed, once again admitting that the accusations raised by Belgium and Denmark against Iran had been triggered by the Israeli regime.

Back in June, Belgian authorities said that Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi had been arrested over suspicions of plotting a bomb attack on a meeting of the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO). Germany later extradited the Iranian diplomat to Belgium.

Swedish police also said a Norwegian citizen of Iranian descent had been arrested on October 21 in connection with the alleged plot and extradited to Denmark.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday saidsuch "false flags" by Tel Aviv will fail to hurt Tehran’s ties with the world.

In a tweet, Zarif said, “Mossad’s perverse & stubborn planting of false flags (more on this later) only strengthens our resolve to engage constructively with the world.”

Zarif later posted a “chronology of a Mossad program to kill the JCPOA”, and suggested that the events are not “incredible series of coincidences”.

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RT

‘Wheels in motion to replace MBS with someone compatible with West,’ ex-Pentagon analyst tells RT

November 3, 2018

FILE PHOTO © Saudi Royal Court / Handout via Reuters

Following outrage over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Prince Mohammad bin Salman might face troubles at home. As analysts told RT, some in Saudi Arabia are keen to see the Crown Prince go.

Much of the mounting international outrage over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is attributed to Mohammad bin Salman, the 33-year-old Crown Prince who once famously vowed to reform his autocratic kingdom into a vibrant modern state. He recently assumed authority over the Saudi intelligence community – in addition to sweeping powers in defense and the economy – but it doesn’t mean his position in the monarchy is rock solid, experts believe.

Michael Maloof, former senior security policy adviser in the Pentagon, told RT America that the young prince has made more enemies than friends among the Saudi royals, and “has upset the leadership so much.” According to the analyst, there is a growing rebellion against MBS in the House of Saud.

Asked if this scenario – a palace coup or the likes – is conceivable, Maloof confirmed that it is, given that the Crown Prince has alienated too many members of the court and now it’s “just a question of time.”

Those who are conspiring against MBS hope that the US and the West will “support someone who would carry that out,”the former Pentagon official pointed out, adding: “However, it’s a little premature to say this is going to happen.”

The conversation took place following news reports that Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, a younger brother of the reigning King Salman, has returned to Saudi Arabia from exile. It was reported that he traveled to the kingdom with some guarantees from US and UK security agencies.

“Why would the brother of the king come back, get out of the exile and come back to the kingdom if he had no feeling that he had some kind of support?” Maloof asked.

Calls to oust Prince Mohammad from power were heard on the other side of the Atlantic. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Saudi Arabia’s most vocal backers in Congress, said in mid-October that he has “got to go.”

“This guy is a wrecking ball. He had this guy murdered in a consulate in Turkey, and to expect me to ignore it – I feel used and abused,”Graham, an influential member of the Senate Armed Services committee and a close ally of President Donald Trump, said, adding that Mohammad was “toxic” and “can never be a world leader on the world stage.”

Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal suggested that this could spell the beginning of the end of MBS’ rule. “Basically, you have the situation of what the mafia’s done – to send [their] wise guy out, to make a hit… and throwing him in front of the police station. This is mafia stuff,” he told RT.

“I think we’ll see Mohammad bin Salman pivot east, to China and Russia and other alliances before the US and the UK can take him out,” Blumenthal suggested.

***

RT

After 17 years of war, top US commander in Afghanistan admits Taliban cannot be defeated

November 3, 2018

© Global Look Press / Yaqoub Azorda

The Afghanistan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be achieved through a political resolution with the Taliban, the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations has conceded.

In his first interview since taking command of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in September, Gen. Austin Scott Miller provided NBC News with a surprisingly candid assessment of the seemingly never-ending conflict, which began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001.

“This is not going to be won militarily. This is going to a political solution," Miller said.

He mused that the Taliban is also tired of fighting and may be interested in starting to “work through the political piece” of the 17-year-old war.

But it’s not clear if the Taliban is open to negotiations. Last month, a top Taliban commander told RT, in a rare interview, that the group’s leaders had no desire to negotiate with the Americans.

Described for years as a stalemate, the conflict has been tipping in the Taliban’s favor in recent months. Even by US military estimates, the Afghan government controls or influences just over half of the country’s 407 districts – a record low since the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, began tracking district control in November 2015.

To make matters worse, casualties among Afghan government forces have skyrocketed in recent months. Afghan security forces suffered 1,000 fatalities in August and September, according to the Pentagon.

Miller’s desire for a political settlement was echoed earlier by the State Department, which said in August that the US was doing everything it could to facilitate peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

The new US commander has experienced the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan first-hand. In October, Miller survived a Taliban attack in Kandahar, which left a prominent Afghan warlord and local intelligence chief dead.

***

NEONNETTLE

US Military Refuses Trump's Order to Build Migrant Camp at Southern Border White House request to build emergency detention facilities is rejected

By: Jay Greenberg

5th November 2018

The US military has refused a White House request to build migrant detention camps at the Southern Border crossing as thousands march through Mexico toward the United States, according to reports.The Pentagon's apparent rejection, which was disclosed to Reuters by unnamed officials, highlights the constant resistance against the Trump administration over using military resources to fortify the border against invasion from illegal immigrants.President Donald Trump told supporters to "look at what is marching up - that's an invasion" during a rally ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections.

According to Sky News, last week, the US military announced more than 7,000 troops would go to the border with Mexico as thousands of Central American migrants slowly march together towards the US.Mexico's interior ministry estimated at the weekend that there were more than 5,000 migrants, from countries including Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, currently moving through southern Mexico either with the caravan or in smaller groups.
The soldiers are being deployed as part of a mission dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot to "harden" the southern border, supporting the border control and about 2,000 National Guard forces already sent there.Mr. Trump said last Thursday that US troops should treat rocks thrown by migrants like firearms attacks.

"Consider it a rifle," he said."When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military police, consider it a rifle."
Later, he told reporters if agents or soldiers "are going to be hit in the face with rocks, we're going to arrest those people. That doesn't mean shoot them."
Immigration is a big election issue in the midterms, and Mr. Trump claimed Democrats encouraged chaos at US borders because it was good politics. "Democrats want to invite caravan after caravan of illegal aliens into our country," he said.A large group of migrants has vowed to push on towards Mexico City as troops began erecting barbed wire fencing.They have been walking for three weeks and some days demand treks of more than 100 miles (160km).
They reached a gymnasium in Cordoba where they held a vote to cover the 178 miles (285km) to Mexico City on Monday by walking and hitching rides.Many of the people still with the caravan have now covered more than 800 miles (1,200km) since setting off from Honduras on 13 October.Calls have grown in recent days for buses to transport scores of people to the Mexican capital for medical treatment, but no buses have arrived.Some migrants have broken away from the caravan and gone ahead but many feel their chances of getting into the US are better if they go in large numbers.Mexican forces have been overwhelmed as caravans of thousands of migrants have stormed their southern border with Guatemala.Meanwhile, NBC and Fox News say they will stop airing President Trump's campaign advert that featured an immigrant convicted of murder.CNN had already rejected the ad, declaring it "racist."The ad linked Luis Bracamontes, convicted of killing two sheriff's deputies in California in 2014, to the migrant caravan.

***

RT

‘Last stop!’: Driver kicks everyone off bus for not making room for wheelchair user

November 2, 2018

Francois Le Berre told passengers that "everyone might need a wheelchair one day”. © Facebook / François Le Berre

A Paris bus driver is being hailed as a hero after he expelled all passengers on board his vehicle because no one would make room for a wheelchair user.

The incident took place in mid-October but has gone viral in recent days, with unnamed the driver receiving plaudits from around the world after the story received widespread media coverage.

Francois Le Berre, who uses a wheelchair as a result of his multiple sclerosis, waited for passengers already on board the bus to make room. When no one would oblige, the driver took the drastic action of kicking everyone off.

“Last stop! Everyone out!” he reportedly shouted, as cited by RTL, before turning to Francois and saying, “You come on, they can wait for the next one.”

“No-one wanted to move despite the access ramp,” Le Berre told Huffington Post. “Everyone might need a wheelchair one day,” he reportedly told the other passengers as the bus took off, reports The Independent.

The driver’s unorthodox actions unleashed a flood of admiration on social media. “Bravo to the bus driver, but on the other hand, shame on those passengers,” wrote one Twitter user.

“What compassion and civility! We too often put imbeciles front and center in the media. It’s also important to retweet examples like this,” wrote another.

The Parisian transport company that operates the bus service in question, RATP, asked Francois for more information on the driver so they could commend him properly for his actions.

***

CityLab

I Took ‘Adulting Classes’ for Millennials

Andrew Zaleski

Oct 29, 2018

On the eve of my wife’s 30th birthday–a milestone I, too, will soon hit–she posed a troubling question: Are we adults yet?

We certainly feel that way: We hold our own jobs, pay our own rent, cover our own bills, drive our own cars. Our credit is in order. But we don’t yet own a house and have no children–two markers commonly associated with fully-fledged adulthood (and two markers that both our sets of parents had reached well before they turned 30). And there are other gaps in our maturity: I don’t buy napkins or know how to golf; up until last year, I didn’t know how to change the oil in my car’s engine. Thankfully, last year we managed to throw a dinner party, our first, without burning the pork roast.

A vague anxiety over these known-unknowns is something of a generational hallmark. A Monday-morning scroll through the social media feed of the average 20-something might turn up a handful of friends sharing memes of dogs–looking bewildered, exasperated, or both–unironically captioned with something like: “Don’t make me adult today.”

Yes, Millennials have killed yet another thing. In this case, it’s something so fundamental that it may have seemed unkillable, but apparently isn’t: knowing how to be an adult.

Younger people need not look far on the internet to find popular condemnation from card-carrying grown-ups about our many shortcomings. We are, we are often told, simpering, self-indulgent, immune-to-difficulty know-nothings, overgrown toddlers who commute on children’s toys and demand cucumber water in our workplaces. But in our own social circles, such constructive criticism can be harder to find. Young urbanites tend to pack themselves into specific neighborhoods, cities, and living situations that have relatively fewer older residents. In such communities, knowledge on how to Seamless a meal to the doorstep is a dime a dozen, but first-hand experience in snaking a drain, cooking a meal for four, or operating a manual transmission comes at more of a premium. (To say nothing of the fact that a third of Americans between 18 and 34 are living with their parents.)

Luckily, the rough road to adulthood can be paved with adulting classes. The Adulting Collective, a startup venture out of Portland, Maine, made a big splash about two years ago after national news outlets reported on its in-person events. In its short lifespan, the Collective has offered up lessons, either guided or via online video, in such varied life skills as bike safety, holiday gift-giving for the cash-strapped, putting together a monthly budget, opening a bottle of wine without a corkscrew, and assembling a weekly nutritional plan. Their target audience: “emerging adults,” the massive 93-million-strong demographic group composed of people in their 20s and early 30s.

There are similarly structured programs across the country. At the Brooklyn Brainery, for example, you can take classes on how to run a good meeting or what Seinfeld teaches us about love. Take an online course with the Society of Grownups, sponsored by the insurance company Mass Mutual, and topics will include budgeting and how to deal with student-loan debt.

The sheer banality of many of these courses is their salient quality. They’re teaching stuff that people neither look forward to nor seem to enjoy, but implicitly recognize as part of being a grown-up: paying bills, setting a budget, calling the car insurance company, looking after your health. The joyless, quotidian chores of post-adolescence.

“Adulting is something nobody prepares you for, but you know it when it happens. It’s the unglorified part of being on your own,” says Rebekah Fitzsimmons, assistant director of the writing and communication program at Georgia Tech who taught a class on adulting in the 21st century in 2016.

In a bygone era, the ordinariness traditionally associated with growing the hell up was something few noticed–in the first half of the 20th century, 20-somethings were too busy trying not to die of the Spanish Flu or fighting Hitler to worry too much about what life skills they were failing to develop. That has now been replaced by public displays of what it means to be a self-sufficient human being, Fitzsimmons says. At the intersection of these two competing truths is the cottage industry of adulting, one nurtured by Instagram hashtags and built around how-to classes for hapless Millennials.

Born in 1989, I am a card-carrying member of the oft-derided demographic. How hapless am I? To find out, I signed up for the two action challenges the Adulting Collective offered last fall: one on nutrition and another focused on monthly budgeting. Via email, I received instructions for each of these week-long courses, which had me tackling a new skill or task each day.

When I hit 30, I intend to complete emerging adulthood fully equipped for whatever comes next.

First lesson: Hydrate! Never would I have thought the amount of water I consumed would be a point of instruction. But it turns out that young adults are notoriously poor judges of this particular basic biological need. The crash course in nutrition from the Adulting Collective that arrived in my inbox last fall was titled “Detox Before You Retox,” and it heavily emphasized hangover avoidance. Billed as a way to prepare yourself “before the next happy hour,” the instructions contained multiple steps broken down over five days. Step one: Get your basics in order, like eating your veggies, exercising, and drinking more water.

So one evening I stood in the harsh glow of my kitchen’s overhead fluorescent lighting–pitcher at the ready, glass on the countertop–applying myself to my first adulting lesson. On my smartphone I made a quick calculation: my weight, divided by 2.2, multiplied by my age, divided by 28.3, divided once more by eight. The answer: eight. More precisely, I needed to drink 7.56 cups of water to hit my proper daily intake.

This was only one of the big takeaways I received. I also learned that a morning drink of lemon water and cayenne pepper mixed with said water can help boost my metabolism, apparently. Like the unnecessarily complex hydration formula above, some of this material had the effect of making a heretofore uncomplicated thing more daunting. It was months later it finally dawned on me that a simple Google search could yield a far simpler answer for the number of glasses of water I ought to drink every day.

How did it come to this? Did previous generations have so much trouble mastering the basics?

“In an ideal world, we would all be followed around by this combination of our grandmother and Merlin who would lovingly teach us how to do each and every thing in the world,” says Kelly Williams Brown, author of the 2013 book Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 535 Easy(ish) Steps. “In the absence of that, it can be nice to have resources.”

Brown’s book seems to be largely responsible for the meteoric rise of the gerund form of the word (which was short-listed by Oxford Dictionaries as the word of the year in 2016). A revised edition of Adulting was published in March. The adulting industry itself is newer. Rachel Weinstein co-founded the Adulting School (now Collective) with Katie Brunelle in fall 2016. (Brunelle has since left the business.)

A professional therapist, Weinstein would sometimes encounter younger clients who spoke about the idiosyncrasies of grown-up life with a feeling of self-conscious shame. Being overwhelmed about how to manage money or clean out their kitchen pantry were things they felt they had to hide. “I just saw a lot of my clients struggle with life, trying to be competent in skills that we’re not necessarily taught. People had this sense of internal embarrassment,” she says.

To Weinstein, this seemed like a golden business opportunity. As a group, 26-year-olds are the single biggest age cohort in the U.S., followed by people who are 25, 27, and 24. Yet unlike previous generations, the young people of today are slower to reach the milestones usually associated with adulthood: living independently, forming their own households, having children, and getting married. “Today’s young people,” as the U.S. Census Bureau reported last year, “look different from prior generations in almost every regard.”

Tempting as it might be to identify the price of avocados as the culprit in this stunted generational progress, there may be other reasons to explain the shift. A research report released in the spring by Freddie Mac cited weak wage growth and the rapid rise of both housing costs and average expenditures as some of the principal reasons. “A popular meme, ‘adulting is hard,’ provides a humorous take on the challenges faced by young adults,” the authors wrote. “Like a lot of good comedy, the phrase has a tinge of cruelty.”

The typical adulting student is someone whose childhood was tech-dependent and activity-rich, the sort of high-achiever kid told to get good grades.

Geography plays a role, too: Millennials tend to choose to live in the centers of high-cost cities, and their earning power hasn’t kept pace with housing costs. Since 2000, the median home price in the U.S. has risen by a quarter, from $210,000 to $270,000, while the per capita real income for young adults has risen by only 1 percent during that same period. Throw those myriad factors together, and you have some of the explanation for why 20-somethings are renting for longer periods of time than they once did, as well as why marriage and fertility rates have dropped. Appropriately, Freddie Mac’s report was titled, “Why Is Adulting Getting Harder?”

But if you go further back, delaying the markers of adulthood does have historical precedent, says Holly Swyers, an anthropology professor at Lake Forest College. She recently completed a project examining adulthood in America from the Civil War to the present day. For much of the period Swyers studied, many Americans over 18 followed roughly the same trajectory as modern Millennials do: They spent their 20s figuring out life and establishing themselves financially. The script didn’t flip until the 1950s and 1960s, when the markers that defined crossing over into the world of adulthood came to mean marrying and having children.

“Marrying when you’re 20, having kids by 21, and being established is a little bit freakish in American history,” she says.

So if those Americans of yore managed to (eventually) attain maturity without the aid of online courses, why can’t Millennials?

Maybe we really are uniquely ignorant. That’s the thesis that GOP senator and Gen Xer Ben Sasse presents in his book The Vanishing American Adult. He writes that younger Americans have willfully embraced “perpetual adolescence.” Some of this is our fault, evidently: staring at our smartphones for hours on end has obliterated our attention spans. Yet Sasse also places blame at the feet of his own generation for its “reluctance to expose young people to the demands of real work.”

Weinstein, however, offers another explanation. She attributes the acute modern need for additional grow-up instruction to class and demographics. Her typical adulting student is probably someone whose childhood was tech-dependent and activity-rich, the sort of high-achiever kid who was repeatedly told to bring home good grades in order to get into a good college. “Whatever folks are really being pressured for college prep, they’re just not getting as much time and exposure at home hanging out with their family, learning how to unclog the kitchen sink, or hang a picture on the wall,” she says.

Lots of those over-scheduled and test-prepped teens of the aughts also missed out on erstwhile educational staples like home economics and shop classes, where high-school kids once learned how to darn a sock or hold a hammer; many schools began mothballing these mandatory courses in the 1990s. As a result, legions of American high-school graduates are being unleashed on the world without any basic skills. Some higher-education institutions, such as New Jersey’s Drew University, have stepped in to offer “Adulting 101” classes in things like beginner car care for their undergraduates.

The Adulting Collective doesn’t rely solely on Weinstein’s expertise for its courses, although it appears that designing an adulting curriculum is just as much of a challenge as growing up. Right now, the website contains some short posts and links to videos explaining a few skills, which is a deviation from the original idea to enlist instructors to offer online lessons. According to Weinstein, the new plan heading into 2019 is to build out a membership program that involves action challenges similar to the nutrition course I took part in. “One of the things I’ve learned as a therapist is a lot of times a little bit of accountability to somebody helps us achieve goals and get tasks done,” she says.

To Swyers, what’s extraordinary in Adulting Ed isn’t the curriculum itself, which is a pretty standard mix of self-improvement and personal finance tips. It’s the notion of branding such lessons under the “adulting” rubric. After all, classes geared toward grown-ups and their skills are all over the place. Visit any big-box hardware store and chances are there’s some sort of hands-on workshop taking place, for example. “If somebody is willing to be taught, for instance, basic kitchen skills–which people pay for all the time–they don’t call it an ‘adulting collective.’ They call it a cooking class,” Swyers says.

The difference, says Weinstein, is that the way younger adults are expected to grow older and assume our place in the world has dramatically changed: “I don’t think it’s a ‘hapless Millennial’ kind of thing at all. I just think there are things that are harder about the world today.”

Case in point: The spiraling costs of higher education. Those emerging adults are entering the workforce with massive student loans to pay off; no wonder some days all they can manage to do is Instagram bewildered-dog memes. “I have clients graduating from school with over $100,000 dollars worth of debt,” she says. “When you’re paying a mortgage’s worth of school debt every month, you’re probably going to need a little help stashing some money away in an emergency fund.”

Indeed, the most useful takeaways from my own brush with the adulting industry involved money management. Last fall’s challenge on budgeting included a chart for itemizing monthly breakdowns of expenses: so many dollars toward utilities, housing, food, clothing, and so on. After six months of following the chart I completed during the challenge, I managed to save up a sizable emergency fund of eight months’ worth of expenses–not bad for a freelance writer who graduated college with $250 to his name, and well worth the $5 I paid for the course itself.

The class was theirs. But the experience was all mine. And with my savings in order, I was freed up to stash excess cash in an additional account my wife and I hold to save for a future home down payment. With a house on the horizon, we’ve recently turned our attention to the prospect of having children sooner rather than later.

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CBNNEWS.COM

Healing Powers of Essential Oils from the Bible Making a Comeback

Lorie Johnson

November 3, 2018

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed the essential oil craze sweeping the nation. Chances are, you're wondering whether these oils are helpful or a bunch of baloney.

Get the Right Stuff

Dr. Josh Axe says if you choose one of the certified organic essential oil brands on the market today, you can expect positive results. However, he warns against lower quality synthetic and altered oils, saying they may actually do more harm than good. That's because artificial fragrances are linked to a multitude of serious health concerns including infertility, obesity lung disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and Alzheimer's Disease.
He says plug-in air fresheners, perfumes touted by celebrities and scented candles are terrible for our overall health, not to mention laundry detergents and other household cleaners that contain synthetic fragrances. He says research shows the chemicals in personal care items like lotions, deodorants, shampoos, and toothpaste pose health problems, too.

Not to worry. There are perfectly safe alternatives to all of those common items using essential oils.

Essential Oils in the Bible

In his book, Essential Oils Ancient Medicine, Axe and co-authors Ty Bollinger and Jordan Rubin point out that although essential oils are a novel idea to most people, they've actually been around for thousands of years. In fact, they're mentioned more than 300 times in the Bible.

Through the ancient process of distillation, essential oils harness the healing powers of the growing things God placed on the earth on the third day of creation: trees, bark, roots, flowers, leaves, and shrubs.

The wise men brought the baby Jesus gifts of the essential oils frankincense and myrrh, known for their healing and protective properties.

Shortly before the crucifixion of Jesus, the Bible tells us Mary bathed his feet with spikenard (John 12:3), a highly-prized essential oil used for a variety of medicinal properties. Essential oils were used for anointing and worship.

What Essential Oils Can Do For You

The more than 50 essential oils on the market today are used to cure dozens of health issues from acid reflux to warts. They can also help us take care of our homes and our bodies without using toxic chemicals.

For example, oil of oregano, nicknamed "nature's antibiotic" is a non-toxic antimicrobial effective against bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Frankincense is used to improve brain health and as an anti-inflammatory. Peppermint oil helps relieve coughs and headaches and is touted for its mood-boosting properties. Lemon oil aids digestive issues and boosts immunity. Sandalwood is used to increase testosterone and as an aphrodisiac. Lavender, the most consumed essential oil in the world today aids in sleep and has even been shown to reduce PTSD.

How to Use

Many people choose to diffuse essential oils into the air. Diffusers are similar to vaporizers and can be purchased online or most discount stores. Diffusing essential oils is simple and basically involves breathing the steam that escapes from boiling water that's been treated with one or more oils. Most instructions call for filling the diffuser with water, placing a few drops of an essential oil into the water and plugging it in.

Some oils can be applied directly to the skin. Since the oils are highly concentrated, only a drop or two at a time will suffice. Some oils, such as peppermint, can irritate the skin if applied full strength, so the oil needs to be diluted with another oil, called a carrier oil, such as coconut, almond or jojoba.

Lastly, many essential oils can be ingested, such as oil of oregano. A common practice involves placing a few drops into a glass of water and drinking the liquid three times a day for no more than ten days.

Dr. Axe says before using an essential oil, become familiar with the recommended method of treatment associated with it. He advises consulting a health care professional before using essential oils in case of drug interactions and other possible complications. He points out some oils are not recommended for pregnant or nursing women as well as the very young or elderly.

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

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Do thou also take sweet herbs, the flower of choice myrrh...sweet-smelling cinnamon...sweet-smelling calamus, and of cassia ...and olive oil. And thou shalt make it a holy anointing oil, a perfumed ointment tempered by the art of the perfumer: it shall be a holy anointing oil.”
(Exodus 30:22-25)