End Time Info

A Messianic Jew Reflects on Christmas

Thea — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 16:31:11 +0000

Is Christmas a holiday with pagan origins? Is it wrong to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25^th? And what about putting up a Christmas tree? Is that a direct violation of Jeremiah 10?

As a Jewish follower of Jesus (commonly called a “Messianic Jew”), I do not relate to the Christmas season the way many Christians do, especially those who were raised in a home where Christmas was celebrated. Yet I do not have a problem with the Christian celebration of Christmas as long as the spirit of the celebration is right. If Jesus is being adored and his birth is being commemorated, the date of that commemoration is not a concern to me.

It is true that there is no biblical holiday that marks the birth of Jesus, nor is there a command given to celebrate it at a later time. But that doesn’t mean it was wrong for the later Church to develop the Christmas tradition.

To be sure, some traditions are negative and destructive, going against the Scriptures and even making void what the Bible teaches. And Jesus actively opposed such traditions. But other traditions are neutral, while still others can be positive. If, over time, Christians felt it important to remember the birth of the Messiah along with his death and resurrection, what harm is there in doing so?

It is true that the evidence appears against Jesus being born on December 25^th, although there were early Church leaders who did believe he was born at that time.

More importantly, December 25^th was a pagan holiday, and many believe that the Church adopted this day to celebrate Christmas as a capitulation to paganism. While this is certainly possible (as a Messianic Jew, I don’t relate to Church history the way many Christians do), it’s also possible that this was not the case at all.

As the recently departed theologian R. C. Sproul explains, “It just so happens that on the twenty-fifth of December in the Roman Empire there was a pagan holiday that was linked to mystery religions; the pagans celebrated their festival on December 25. The Christians didn’t want to participate in that, and so they said, ‘While everybody else is celebrating this pagan thing, we’re going to have our own celebration. We’re going to celebrate the thing that’s most important in our lives, the incarnation of God, the birth of Jesus Christ. So this is going to be a time of joyous festivities, of celebration and worship of our God and King.’”

The whole gospel story is a story of redemption, and since God owns every day of the year, why not redeem a day set apart for pagan worship and use it instead to glorify the Lord?

Regardless of why this date was chosen, since it is the date on which hundreds of millions of Christians do mark the Messiah’s birth, it’s as good a day as any to celebrate it, should you be so inclined to do so.

Many Messianic Jews celebrate the birth of Jesus (whom they call Yeshua, using his original Hebrew name) during the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), which takes place in September or October. They believe an argument can be made that he was born at this time of the year, they point out that this is already a time set apart on the biblical calendar as holy to the Lord, and they point to John 1:14, which states that “the Word” (speaking of Jesus) tabernacled among us.

Personally, I think that’s wonderful as well. But I also believe it’s fine not to celebrate the birth of Jesus on any particular holiday. Let every day be a celebration of his birth!

At the same time, since the gospels take considerable time to describe these important events (historically, in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, and theologically in John 1), it’s fine to mark this with a special, annual celebration where these texts are read again and familiar hymns, like “Joy to the World” are sung. Hope remains alive because God sent his Son into the world.

I’m aware, of course, that there’s no evidence that the earliest disciples specially marked the day of his birth, and I’m aware that in early American history, the celebration of Christmas was actually banned, primarily through Puritan influence. But once again, I believe the spirit of the event is what matters most, not the questions of date or timing.

What about erecting a Christmas tree? Does this have anything to do with the birth of Jesus? Obviously not. Does it have pagan origins? There are arguments for or against such origins. Let each one decide for himself or herself.

Is it a violation of Jeremiah 10:2-4? Certainly not.

The text in Jeremiah reads, “Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.”

This is talking about making an worshiping an idol, and nothing more. It is not referring to putting up a Christmas tree in your home!

As noted on the CARM website, “If people were praying to their Christmas trees or worshiping them as deities, these passages would certainly apply. But that is not, nor has it ever been, how Christmas trees are used. Christmas trees were never appealed to for blessings nor incorporated into religious rituals or acts of worship. While the exact origin of Christmas trees is unknown and highly disputed, the tradition seems to have come into existence as late as the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation in Germany. There is no evidence that Christians ever used them as anything other than home decorations for the holidays. There is nothing in this tradition that is innately idolatrous or in any way contrary to the biblical prohibitions against carving trees into false gods.”

My personal perspective on Christmas trees is this. If it’s just a fun family tradition that has no religious significance, there’s nothing wrong with that in itself. And if the tree is decorated in such a way that it reminds a family about the birth of Jesus, I see no reason to be critical.

On the other hand, if the tree is the center of a hyper-materialistic, greed-driven celebration, it’s best to separate this from the miracle of the incarnation (the Son of God becoming flesh), lest we degrade his birth into an excuse for carnality.

So for me, as a Messianic Jew, even though I don’t appreciate “the spirit of Christmas” the way many Christians do, I can enjoy Christmas in a non-religious way (a fun time for the family to get together) and I can affirm other believers who set this time of the year aside in a holy way. I can enjoy singing the special hymns too.

Let there be liberty here as long as Jesus is being exalted.

Via aksdrbrown.org

Governments Begin Testing Cryptocurrencies as Cash Use Plummets

Thea — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 18:40:47 +0000

Source: shtfplan.com

Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, is taking a serious look at Bitcoin. As cash use plummets and the amount of currency in circulation dwindles, central banks are looking to cryptocurrencies as government-backed money.

In Sweden, the number of banknotes and coins in circulation has fallen to its lowest level in three decades. Riksbank estimates that cash transactions made up only 15 percent of all retail transactions last year. That number is down from 40 percent in 2010, thanks in large part to massively popular mobile payment services. That leaves the bank wondering if a technology similar to that of Bitcoin’s could be implemented in Sweden.

Riksbank isn’t the only central bank taking a serious look at blockchain, the technology that makes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies run. These systems, also called distributed ledgers, rely on networks of computers, rather than a central authority like a bank, to verify and record transactions on a shared, virtually incorruptible database. Government bankers across the world believe this has the potential to replace cash and make other payment systems more efficient. – Technology Review

Riksbank is investigating not only distributed-ledger technology (which it describes as unproven yet “progressing incredibly rapidly”) but also traditional, centralized accounting methods for its “e-krona” (pdf) project. Many central banks are looking into this type of currency, but Sweden appears to be at the forefront of the movement.

According to Rod Garratt, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a cryptocurrency that’s available to all consumers “opens up a whole host of issues” and would pose new challenges for makers of monetary policy.

First, there’s the question of who, exactly, should verify the transactions and maintain the distributed ledger. Even if that’s solved, the new system would be, in a sense, too streamlined, making it easier for bank runs to occur in a moment of crisis or panic. In most current financial systems, large-scale withdrawals of funds are naturally slowed by the time it takes for a central bank to produce the paper money people are demanding. But if the currency is purely digital, no such brakes exist—a panicked citizenry could empty their accounts almost instantly, leaving an entire country’s banking system all but penniless.

A new journal article (pdf) published by the Bank of International Settlements, a kind of central bank for central banks, suggests a more straightforward approach than trying to use cryptocurrency to replace cash. In the article, Garratt and Morten Bech, a researcher at the BIS, draw an important distinction between a “retail” cryptocurrency like FedCoin and a “wholesale” one that would only be used by banks. –Technology Review

China’s central bank has also begun testing of a digital currency. Speeches and research papers from officials at the People’s Bank of China show that the bank’s strategy is to introduce the digital currency alongside China’s renminbi. But there is currently no timetable for this, and the bank seems to be proceeding cautiously.

But the main issue for governments is that they are losing their grip and control on currency. Sweden’s dwindling cash usage is increasing reliance on mobile payment systems risks marginalizing people who don’t use them or can’t access them. Those systems are also run by private companies, which means that commercial forces, rather than government policies, could end up determining how effectively the financial system serves people and the economy.

Christianity grows in North Korea despite torture, persecution

Thea — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 17:35:27 +0000

Although the author of this article chose the word “despite”, I think it is more in line with Jesus’ teaching to say that Christianity grows ‘because’ of persecution, as did during the 1st century AD or any century since. Not that God intended persecution to be the main force behind the spreading of the Gospel, but He sure knew how easily we slide into indifference when the going gets too easy.

Here’s what The Blaze reported:

North Korea’s underground Christian community is thriving despite followers of Christ suffering horrific torture and brutal deaths at the hands of the communist government, according to Fox News.

According to Open Doors, a Christian persecution watchdog site, North Korea has ranked No. 1 as the deadliest place for Christians for the last 16 years. Yet, North Korea still has an estimated Christian population of around 9 million people, or 36 percent of North Korea’s total population.

The Korea Risk Group told Fox News that North Korea’s Constitution maintains a non-discriminatory policy concerning the practice of religion, but this is just a facade to please visiting foreigners. Foreign diplomats and tourists are wheeled past state-run churches and mosques for various faiths. Each of these churches has the appropriately dressed clergy worshiping at the appropriate alters with congregations of people passing around collection plates.

According to the Korea Risk Group, this is a show performed by hand-picked state workers. The reality is that Christianity is seen as dangerous to the state, according to Fox News. Those caught practicing it face the harshest penalties.

In May, Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, explained why North Korea despises Christianity, saying the faith “offers an alternative set of beliefs, an alternative way of life, a way of life that does not tolerate tyranny. The North Korean regime fears Christianity because it offers a venue for the exchange of ideas.”

“Christians are accused of being imperialists seeking to overthrow the government and those who are caught practicing their faith are arrested, horrendously tortured, imprisoned and [sometimes] immediately put to death,” Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern. told Fox News.

North Korean defectors have reported that Christians are sent to concentration camps where they are “crushed by steamrollers and used to test biological weapons, or hung on a cross over a fire,” according to Fox News.

Fox News reported that according to the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, there are around 70,000 Christians within these camps. Reportedly, 75 percent of Christians who wind up in the camps do not survive.

Fox News reported that North Korea’s Christian population is very wary about exposing their faith, even to their own children:

Vernon Brewer, founder and president of humanitarian organization World Help told Fox News that he often thinks about a case involving a girl named Eun, whose third-grade teacher gave the class a “special assignment” to go home and “look for a book” and if it’s the right book, the student will be honored. Eun ended up finding a Bible.

“The next day she received a prize at her school. But when Eun returned home, her parents weren’t there,” he recalled. “It’s hard to imagine such cruelty that would unknowingly turn children on their own parents.”

North Korean authorities will reportedly snatch up family members of Christians under the suspicion that they share their Christian family member’s faith.

The Christian faith is growing in North Korea despite the country’s hostility toward the faithful.

According to Fox News, North Koreans are sometimes allowed to visit China. There, they gather Bibles, and other Christian literature. They smuggle the texts back into North Korea at great peril.

“Despite efforts to eradicate Christians, we have found the church is North Korea is actually growing,” Brewer said. “They know only God is powerful enough to break through the darkness of the most oppressive regime on earth.”

Recently unearthed 2600 old artifacts confirm accuracy of Bible passage

Thea — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 20:37:12 +0000

Via Christianity Today

Archaeologists at a dig in Jerusalem are claiming their discoveries prove a Bible passage is historically accurate.

Excavating the City of David in Jerusalem, archaeologists have found a host of ancient burnt artefacts dating back around 2,600 years.

The discovery of charred wood, grape seeds, pottery, fish scales and bones covered in layers of ash prove the authenticity of the biblical description of the burning of Jerusalem, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The book of Jeremiah describes the destruction at the hands of the Babylonians:

‘Now on the seventh day of the fifth month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.

‘He burned the house of the Lord, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire’ (52:12-13).

Technology In Place For Bible’s ‘Mark Of The Beast’

Thea — Sun, 06 Aug 2017 10:38:14 +0000

It was once something out of science fiction. Now, it’s just another day at the office. A company in Wisconsin, Three Square Market, has introduced a “voluntary microchipping” program for employees, with just under half its workers participating. The company claims it is the first use of this technology in the United States and proponents assert…

The North Korean Nuclear Cha-cha-cha

Thea — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 16:19:46 +0000

Via The Corbett Report

There are few events in geopolitics so metronomically dependable you could dance to them, but the North Korean nuclear situation is one of them.

It’s a military exercise cha cha cha and a nuclear testing cha cha cha.

It’s a tightening sanctions cha cha cha and a “Death To America!” cha cha cha.

Still, as reliable as this dance has been throughout the years (I myself have been talking about it for a very long time), there is the sense that it is starting to accelerate. And while an errant drummer who speeds up a song might be responsible for nothing more than a few bumps or bruises on the dance floor, the escalation of the nuclear dance is altogether more dangerous.

The latest steps toward the nuclear cliff took place on Monday when North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. The missiles, which landed in Japan’s declared exclusive economic zone and put the country on its highest state of alert, are not believed to be intercontinental, but the North Korean government has boasted that it is ready to test-fire an ICBM “at any time, at any place,” perhaps even this year. Given that North Korea is still technically at war with South Korea (and its co-belligerents, the UN and the US), and given that an ICBM is one half of the key to delivering a nuclear payload to the west coast of the United States (nuclear miniaturization being the other half), this is not an insignificant threat.

Worse, this latest whirl around the dance floor comes amid a flurry of worrying developments:

On Saturday it was revealed that the Pentagon has been engaged in covert cyberwarfarewith North Korea for at least three years, tasked with sabotaging the country’s missile tests.
On Monday North Korean UN Ambassador Ja Song Nam warned the Security Councilthat this “may go over to an actual war, and, consequently, the situation on the Korean Peninsula is again inching to the brink of a nuclear war.”
Also on Monday the first elements of the US’ highly contentious Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system were deployed in South Korea.

The latter development is a perfect example of how the North Korean situation really could spiral into war, and not necessarily a war involving North Korea. The THAAD anti-missile system is being done under cover of the threat from North Korea, but both Russia and China know full well that it is equally aimed at them. Although anti-missile systems are presented to the public as being solely defensive in nature, military planners know that the ability to deter missile systems is a key requirement for an offensive military gambit.

As Victor Ozerov, chair of Russia’s Federal Defense and Security Committee, told reporters on Tuesday: “This is yet another provocation against Russia[…] Under the guise of a North Korean threat, they want if not to close the ring around Russia, then at least to besiege it from the west and the east.”

Scariest of all is how easy it is for the rumors, speculation, and unconfirmed reports that travel through the newswires in the wake of every such event to garble the facts. It is positively frightening how quickly North Korea’s “unidentified projectile” became a “nuclear missile” in the imaginations of the establishment fake news headline writers.

The North Korean nuclear dance has sometimes been perceived as a type of harmless parochial hoedown. After all, it’s just those crazy North Koreans with their wacky dictator threatening the world’s greatest superpower with their firecrackers and peashooters. But with every new spin around the floor, the dance gets more serious. North Korea’s nuclear program advances, relations between NATO and China/Russia worsen, and the margin for human error grows. Suddenly the world is dancing on a powder keg, and the military contractors who have been milking this situation for everything it’s worth have no incentive to bring the evening to a close.

…But wait! What strange tune is this? It sounds like one member of the band is trying to strike up a different tune! No, not NATO or any of its constituent belligerents. It’s China!

Here’s Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s latest crazy idea in a nutshell: “Hey guys, how about instead of engaging in a military exercise that simulates a full-scale of invasion of North Korea every single year you try talking to the North Koreans instead? You know, rather than dropping “dummy” nuclear bombs on the peninsula in a “simulated” nuclear apocalypse, why don’t you cut out the exercises and we’ll get our North Korean friends to stop their nuke program. Huh? What do you say, gang?”

It remains to be seen whether the rest of the band will take them up on the offer, but no one is holding their breath. They’re all too busy doing the cha-cha-cha as instructed.

They Thought She Was Crazy: Doctor Extracts RFID Chip from Sex Trafficking Victim

Thea — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 18:16:47 +0000

Via thedailysheeple.com

If someone walks into a hospital and claims that they’re being tracked, and that they need to have a tracking device removed, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re going to be sent to a mental institution instead. However, according to a doctor who wished to remain anonymous to protect his patient, that very situation occurred last October and it didn’t end how you might expect.

The patient in question was a 28-year-old woman who claimed that she had a GPS tracking device planted in her body. Normally a patient like that would be regarded as crazy, but this woman appeared totally sane, and she had an incision mark on her side. So the doctor decided to check her out anyway. The medical staff at the hospital were stunned when they finally gave her an x-ray.

“Embedded in the right side of her flank is a small metallic object only a little bit larger than a grain of rice. But it’s there. It’s unequivocally there. She has a tracker in her. And no one was speaking for like five seconds — and in a busy ER that’s saying something.”

It turns out that it wasn’t a GPS device, but an RFID chip.

“It’s used to tag cats and dogs. And someone had tagged her like an animal, like she was somebody’s pet that they owned.”

In a way, that makes it even creepier than a GPS device. RFID chips have a very short range. To be useful for tracking someone’s position, they would have to be kept confined in an area where the right equipment is in place to send or receive signals from the chip. The doctor would later discover that this woman was a victim of sex trafficking.

Science fiction has been warning about the potential of tracking devices for years, but usually in reference to how the government might use this technology. It just goes to show that the way humans use technology in the real world is often stranger (and creepier) than fiction.

Corbett Report: US Strikes Syria

Thea — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 15:52:45 +0000

Via corbettreport.com

As you know by now, President Trump ordered missile strikes on the Al Shayrat airfield in Syria Thursday night. Starting at 8:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, the US guided-missile destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter launched a total of 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. This being the age of the internet, you can watch the missiles being launched (at a cost of $1.41 million a pop) in a series of YouTube videos kindly supplied by the Pentagon…

Canon lawyers and theologians to hold conference on ‘deposing the pope’

Thea — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 18:29:50 +0000

Via Lifesitenews.com

Canon lawyers, theologians, and scholars will be meeting in Paris in two weeks to discuss a topic that has never been the focus of a Catholic conference before: How to depose a heretical pope.

Titled Deposing the Pope: Theological Premises, Canonical Models, Constitutional Challenge, the conference seeks to explore the mechanisms that are built into the Catholic Church for dealing with a pope who openly teaches falsehood and even heresy.

Speaking at the conference will be University of Paris Professor Laurent Fonbaustier who published a 1200 page book last year on the topic that was titled The Deposition of the Heretical Pope.

The conference includes 15 speakers who will be giving a range of talks on the subject matter with titles such as “Conciliarism and the Deposition of a Pope Through the Prism of Gallicanism,” “The Downfall of the Pope: Between Renunciation and Deposition,” and “The Deposition of John XXII and Benedict XIII at Constance, 1415–1417.”

Speaking at the conference are Professors Nicolas Warembourg and Cyrille Dounot, two of the 45 Catholic academics who last June submitted an appeal to the Dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome requesting a repudiation of erroneous propositions they found in Pope Francis’ exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

The group of 45 Catholic academics said the Pope’s exhortation presented “dangers to Catholic faith and morals” since it “contains a number of statements that can be understood in a sense that is contrary to Catholic faith and morals.”

The conference comes after four years of Francis at the helm of the Barque of Peter. During this time the Pope, and the people he has put into key positions, have steered the Church in a direction that would have been unthinkable to faithful Catholics under the two previous pontiffs of John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis’ ambiguous speeches and especially his papal writings have turned cardinal against cardinal, bishop against bishop, and lay-faithful against lay-faithful. Doctrinal confusion has resulted in pastoral guidelines being issued based on his writings that allow Holy Communion to be given to those living in adultery.

Last November Vaticanist Giuseppe Nardi reported that a 1975 theological study by the learned Brazilian layman Arnaldo Vidigal Xavier da Silveira was making the rounds in the Vatican. The layman examined in his work titled The Theological Hypothesis of a Heretical Pope whether it is possible for a pope to be or become a heretic, and if so, what consequences would follow from this.

Reported Nardi: “Three-and-a-half years after the start of his pontificate, Pope Francis is reaching his limits. The impression, given by means of gestures and words, of a latent intention to change the doctrine of the Church must at some point either take on definite form or else it must collapse,” he wrote at that time.

“Francis finds himself cornered by means of the very atmosphere he himself is responsible for creating. It’s no longer about a spontaneous utterance on this or that, which remains improvised and non-binding. His pastoral work and his leadership skills, which demand a sense of responsibility and an exemplary character, are reaching their limits. This could cause Francis [‘s pontificate] to fail,” he added.

The conference comes three months after Cardinal Raymond Burke gave an interview in which he explained that if a pope were to “formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope.”

Burke said in the December 2016 interview that there is a process within the Church for dealing with such a situation, adding his hope that “we won’t be witnessing that at any time soon.”

Also in December American canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters addressed the question of what could be done if a pope were found to be heretical.

Peters writes that the “crucial question” from a canonist’s perspective is “who would determine whether a given pope has fallen into heresy” since Canon 1404 states that the “First See is judged by no one.”

He found in canonical tradition, however, the position that if a general council determined that a pope had committed heresy, by that very fact he will have effectually cut himself off from the true vine, thereby forfeiting his office.

Comments Peters: “…however remote is the possibility of a pope actually falling into heresy and however difficult it might be to determine whether a pope has so fallen, such a catastrophe, Deus vetet [God forbid], would result in the loss of papal office.”

The location for the upcoming conference is significant, reports Church Militant. It was in the 1300s the University of Paris explored the question of what could be done with the possibly heretical Pope John XXII, who denied the doctrine that the souls of the just are admitted to the beatific vision after death, a position he retracted on his deathbed.

Christian street preachers arrested, fined for ‘challenging Muslims’

Thea — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 18:36:25 +0000

Via lifesitenews.com

A British magistrate has convicted two Christian street preachers of disorderly conduct and using “threatening and abusive words … likely to cause alarm.”

Their crime: speaking about Christianity in a sometimes-hostile crowd that includes Muslims, and LGBT supporters.

At the time of the preachers’ arrest, the arresting officer chided one of the men, saying, “People were getting angry. You were challenging homophobia. You were challenging Muslims.” The officer accused them of “anti-social behavior.”

While the judge dismissed charges against a third man, he convicted Michael Overd and Michael Stockwell on Tuesday. They face up to six months in jail.

Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Centre, which is funding their defense, said an appeal was filed.

“We’ll take this all the way to the European Court if we have to,” Williams told LifeSiteNews. “Today’s ruling, in effect, states that Bible is offensive and contains illegal speech which should not be shared in public.

“The Bible and its teachings are the foundation of our society and provided many of the freedoms and protections that we still enjoy today. So it is extraordinary that the prosecution, speaking on behalf of the state, could say that the Bible contains abusive words which, when spoken in public, constitute a criminal offense.”

The Crown prosecutor argued that Biblical claims about the unique, salvational role and divine nature of Jesus Christ were bound to offend and threaten non-Christians.

That makes them offenses under Section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 that prohibits “threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.”

At one point, prosecutor Ian Jackson told the court, “To say to someone that Jesus is the only God is not a matter of truth. To the extent that they are saying that the only way to God is through Jesus, that cannot be a truth.”

That prompted the men’s lawyer, Michael Phillips, to say, “This prosecution is nothing more than a modern-day heresy trial – dressed up under the Public Order Act.”

The men had debated Muslims in the audience that formed around them in downtown Bristol. They also disputed the truth of other faiths. Stockwell, at one point, declared, “If you are trying to come through Catholicism, through Jehovah Witnesses, through Mormonism, the Bible says you’re a thief and a liar and a thief comes to steal and destroy.”

Police arrived, including one on horseback. After asking one preacher to turn down his megaphone, which he did, they arrested four men, throwing one to the ground. They took them to a police station, charged three and released them all.

Williams commented, “The aggressive treatment of Mr. Overd and his friends by the police and prosecution is shocking. We will argue [on appeal] that the police did not act in a reasonable manner. The sensible way to restore public order would have been to ask the crowd to move off. Or they could have asked the preachers to move off.”

Police could have arrested the troublemakers in the crowd, who were “mocking and taunting the preachers for over an hour.” However, by arresting the preachers, Williams told LifeSiteNews, the police were acting as censors for those in the crowd who did not want them to continue.

“That puts us in a very dangerous place. The job of the police is not to stop free speech. There have been people preaching in the street forever,” Williams said.

When rulings in Magistrate’s Court are appealed, Williams explained, a higher court retries the entire matter, rehearing testimony and re-examining evidence.

She told LifeSiteNews that the defense would argue that the whole premise for the law is dangerous.

“Any suggestion that there is a right not to be offended must be strongly resisted,” she said. “In today’s democracy, we need the freedom to debate, challenge and disagree.”

Anti-reform cardinals want Pope to resign

Thea — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 14:06:39 +0000

An interesting piece of news from the Italian Libero and The Times:

A group of cardinals who supported the election of Pope Francis are worried about his reforms and are planning to appeal to him to step down, a Vatican watcher claims, according to The Times.

“A large part of the cardinals who voted for him is very worried and the curia … that organised his election and has accompanied him thus far, without ever disassociating itself from him, is cultivating the idea of a moral suasion to convince him to retire,” Antonio Socci wrote in the Italian newspaper Libero.
The conservative Catholic journalist said that Pope Francis’s election had been backed by progressive German cardinals and a curia faction impatient with the rule of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.
It was the latter faction who now believed that the Pope should resign and who would like to replace him with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, Mr Socci said. He believed that the group numbered around a dozen, “but the importance of the members counts more than their number”.

“Four years after Benedict XVI’s renunciation and Bergoglio’s arrival on the scene, the situation of the Catholic Church has become explosive, perhaps really on the edge of a schism, which could be even more disastrous than Luther’s [who is today being rehabilitated by the Bergoglio church],” Socci wrote.
What was significant, he said, was that the doubters were not the conservative cardinals who had been in open opposition to the Pope since early in his reign.

Putting pressure on a pope to resign is a crime punishable under canon law, Socci added, so it was unclear how the moral suasion might be exercised. (source)

In light of the so called prophecies of Malachy, archbishop of Armagh, the name Pietro as a possible candidate for the next pope can be seen as an interesting item in the above summary, as the list of popes names Petrus Romanus as the last pope before the return of Jesus.

According to an account put forward in 1871 by Abbé Cucherat, Malachy was summoned to Rome in 1139 by Pope Innocent II to receive two wool palliums for the metropolitan sees of Armagh and Cashel. While in Rome, Malachy purportedly experienced a vision of future popes, which he recorded as a sequence of cryptic phrases. This manuscript was then deposited in the Vatican Secret Archives, and forgotten about until its rediscovery in 1590, supposedly just in time for a papal conclave ongoing at the time.

Is Something Strange Happening Inside the Earth?

Thea — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 11:07:50 +0000

Via The Daily Sheeple

Why are “giant fountains of lava” suddenly pouring out of some of the most dangerous volcanoes on the entire planet, and why are so many long dormant volcanoes suddenly roaring back to life? The spectacular eruption of Mt. Etna in Italy is making headlines all over the world, but it is far from alone. According to Volcano Discovery, 35 major volcanoes either are erupting right now or have just recently erupted, and dozens of others are stirring. So what is causing this upsurge in volcanic activity? Is something strange happening inside the Earth?

According to the USGS, magma is “molten rock underground”, and lava is molten rock “that breaks through the Earth’s surface”. Right now, something is pushing magma up through the crust of the Earth at a number of key spots around the planet. On the island of Sicily, the “giant fountains of lava” that are coming out of Mt. Etna can be seen 30 kilometers away…

Giant fountains of lava could be seen sprouting from the volcano, located on the isle of Sicily, as far away as Catania, around 30 kilometres away, and the resort town of Taormina.

The Meteorological Observatory in Nunziata said: “You can clearly see the lava fountains, although currently modest, as it escapes from the crater in the southeast.”

An orange air alert has been issued, meaning that airspace will remain open but authorities will continue to monitor the situation.

On the other side of the world, a constant stream of molten rock has been springing out of Guatemala’s “Volcano of Fire” since February 25th…

Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire erupted Saturday (Feb 25), spewing lava and sending up plumes of ash that rained down on nearby communities and could eventually reach the capital, civil protection authorities said.

The Volcan de Fuego, one of the country’s three active volcanoes, is located about 45km southwest of the capital Guatemala City. It was the volcano’s second eruption this year.

And in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a “firehose of lava” has been pouring out of the Kilauea Volcano since December 31st.

Meanwhile, a number of large volcanoes that have been dormant for a very long time all over the world have started springing back to life.

For instance, the only active volcano in India has suddenly started “spewing lava and ash” after being silent for 150 years…

Barren Islands volcano, India’s only active volcano, is reportedly spewing lava and ash after a gap of 150 years. It erupted for about four hours in January, scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) claimed.

The volcano is situated in Barren Islands in the Andaman & Nicobar archipelago. Some unsubstantiated reports even claim that it is South Asia’s only active volcano.

Its first recorded eruption dates back to 1787. Since then, the volcano has erupted more than ten times, including the one this year.

At one time scientists would speak of “dead volcanoes”, but now we learning that it really isn’t safe to speak of any volcano as being completely “dead”. So many of these long dormant volcanoes are roaring back to life, and why this is suddenly happening now is puzzling many of the experts.

And as you have seen, this isn’t isolated to just one or two geographic regions. It literally is happening all over the globe.

Last month, Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung in the southern hemisphere erupted seven times in the space of a single day, and meanwhile authorities in the northern hemisphere were warning us that four of Iceland’s biggest volcanoes are preparing to erupt.

Indonesia and Iceland are about as far apart as you can get, and yet they are both being affected by this worldwide phenomenon.

Without a doubt, something definitely appears to be causing a significant increase in worldwide seismic activity.

Let’s talk about earthquakes for a moment. A website known as the Big Wobble recently published an article that included two extraordinary maps. The first map showed the number of major earthquakes from January 1900 to January 1917, and the second map showed the number of major earthquakes from January 2000 to January 2017. The difference between the two maps was startling to say the least.

It is becoming extremely difficult to deny that something is happening to the crust of our planet, and many are becoming concerned about what we could soon experience if the level of seismic activity continues to rise.

We already talked about Mt. Etna, but a much greater threat in Italy appears to be awakening under the city of Naples. A massive supervolcano known as “Campi Flegrei” is close to a “critical state”, and if it erupts the consequences will be beyond catastrophic. The following comes from National Geographic…

A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a “critical state,” scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Based on physical measurements and computer modeling, “we propose that magma could be approaching the CDP [critical degassing pressure] at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed,” wrote the scientists—who are led by Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome.

If that supervolcano were to fully erupt, millions could die, the skies in the northern hemisphere would be darkened for months and the resulting “volcanic winter” would cause famines all around the globe.

And the same things could be said about the supervolcano that is awakening in North Korea too.

In the United States, we should be watching the volcanoes on the west coast for signs of trouble, and my regular readers know that I am particularly concerned about Mt. Rainier. There is an eruption of Mt. Rainier in “The Beginning Of The End“, and it is in there for a reason.

Someday Mt. Rainier will erupt, and the horror that this will mean for the Northwest is beyond anything that I could put into words for you right now.

We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and a major natural disaster could change all of our lives in a single moment.

Just because our lives have been somewhat “normal” for an extended period of time does not mean that they will always be this way, and those that are ignoring the rumblings of our planet do so at their own peril.

Trump, Watergate, Nixon, Rockefeller: The Real Lesson

Thea — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 10:36:34 +0000

By Jon Rappoport via Activist Post

Trump, Watergate, Nixon, Rockefeller: The Real Lesson

—Two very different men, two very different presidents, Trump and Nixon; but the real reasons for attacking them are the same—

Watergate eventually became the story of two young rookie reporters who exposed and took down a president. Nixon.

Try to think of another major story in your lifetime where the reporters themselves took center stage, and in the process nearly eclipsed their own work. Odd.

One of them, Bob Woodward, expanded his fame. The powers-that-be permitted him to go on and, with extraordinary access, write books criticizing future presidents. Woodward became the in-house attack dog. Mr. Limited Hangout.

The other reporter, Carl Bernstein, faded into relative obscurity. Well, after all, he began exposing many journalists’ connections to the CIA. That wasn’t a productive career move. It was, perhaps, a case of him biting the CIA hand that, without his knowledge, had fed him during his Watergate investigation.

What Woodward and Bernstein didn’t know, during Watergate, was this: On the mega-corporate front, the Rockefeller proposal for world control—“free trade, no tariffs”—was advancing toward fruition, and Richard Nixon was standing in the way.

This man, a crook, a president, a liar, an insecure parody of a head of state, Richard Nixon, had gone off script. He had REALLY gone off script.

In an effort to bolster US companies and protect them from foreign competition inside the United States, Nixon began erecting tariffs on a range of goods imported into the US.

If this Nixon economic plan spread to other countries, the entire global program to install “free trade” and mega-corporate emperors on their thrones for a thousand years could crash and burn.

Nixon was a Rockefeller man. He was owned by them. He’d been rescued from financial ruin by The Family, and now he was in the White House undermining their greatest dream. You can’t overstate the degree of the betrayal, from the Rockefeller point of view. You simply can’t.

Something had to be done. The president had to go. This was the real motivation behind Watergate. This was the real op. Yes, there were sub-motives and smaller contexts, as in any major op, but the prime mover was: get Free Trade back on track, and get suitable revenge on the puppet in the White House who went off the script.

Any historian who overlooks this is an outright fool or a deceiver.

Whether the Watergate break-in was planned to serve the higher goal or was pounced upon, after the fact, as the grand opportunity, is beside the point. It was there, and it was used. It became the starting point for the Washington Post, its publisher, veteran editor, and two cub reporters to break Richard Nixon into pieces.

And if the Rockefeller people needed an inside man at the White House to report on the deteriorating mental state of the president as he heated up in the pressure cooker, they had Henry Kissinger, who was another Rockefeller operative.

The Washington Post was owned by Katharine Graham, who was herself a very close friend of the Rockefeller Family. Years later, she would be awarded a medal of honor by the University of Chicago, an institution founded by John D. Rockefeller. On her death, a paid heartfelt obituary was inserted in the NY Times by the trustees, faculty, and staff of Rockefeller University, where she had served on the University Council.

And she and Nixon already hated each other by the early 1970s.

The managing editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, was an old hand at writing promotional material, having worked in Europe crafting releases for a CIA front group. A former Naval intelligence man, he liked one of his cub reporters, Bob Woodward, who had also worked for the Navy in intelligence.

When Woodward came to Bradlee with a story about a man in a parking garage who was passing secrets from the White House/FBI about Watergate, we are supposed to believe that Bradlee naturally responded by giving the green light to a major investigation. Woodward and Carl Bernstein, another cub, would undertake it—with nothing more than Bradlee’s reputation and the future survival of the Post and Katharine Graham’s empire on the line if the cubs got it wrong.

We are supposed to believe Bradlee gave the green light, without knowing who the man in the garage was, without knowing whether Woodward could be trusted, without even getting permission from Graham to move ahead.

Publisher Katharine Graham was briefed on Watergate coverage in April 1973 by reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward; Managing Editor Howard Simons; and Bradlee, her handpicked executive editor. (Mark Godfrey)

Bradlee, a grizzled veteran of Washington, understanding exactly what Washington could do to people who told secrets out of school, just said to Woodward and Bernstein, “You’d better be damned sure you’re right, because otherwise we’re all in trouble.”

Two untested cub reporters set loose in a cage with tigers.

The odds of that happening were nil. Bradlee had to know a great deal from the beginning, and he had to have Katharine Graham’s signal to move. The series of breaking stories would be spoon-fed to the unsuspecting young reporters. They would be consumed by their ambition to advance their careers. Bradlee was confident because he had the essentials of the scandal in hand—all the way up to Nixon, the target—well in advance of his two reporters.

To have proceeded otherwise—Bradlee was simply not that kind of fool. Whatever Deep Throat, the man in the garage, was dishing out to Woodward didn’t really matter. Bradlee already had it in his pocket. Deep Throat was merely a contrivance to allow the story to expand and grow by steps, and to permit Woodward and Bernstein to believe they were peeling layers from an onion.

The man behind the curtain was David Rockefeller.

After the whole scandal had been exposed and Nixon had flown away, in disgrace, from the White House for the last time, David Rockefeller addressed a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of the European Community (October, 1975). He was there to allay their fears about Nixon’s betrayal of the new economic world order. There was really very little he needed to say. David had already created (1973) the free-trade Trilateral Commission, an exceedingly powerful force. And a new puppet, Gerald Ford was in the White House; and Ford had appointed David’s brother, Nelson Rockefeller, as his vice president.

David told the European attendees, “Fortunately, there are no signs that these anti-[free] trade measures [of Nixon] are supported by the [Ford] Administration.”

And that was that. The global mega-corporate colossus was back on track.

The temporary rip in the Matrix had been repaired.

On a far lower level of power politics, everyone and his brother were consumed with the contrails of the scandal that had driven away Nixon and his colleagues. People were congratulating each other on the expunging of a corrupt conspiracy from public life.

The real players, of course, were still in place, stronger than ever. David Rockefeller and his aides were preparing for an even greater coup. They had chosen an obscure man with zero name recognition to be the next president of the United States. Jimmy Carter. Carter would function to forward the goals of the Trilateral Commission in bold view of anyone who knew the score.

And every president since Carter, regardless of party affiliation, has supported and extended those Globalist-corporate goals. No questions asked. Obama, who fatuously remarked during his 2008 election campaign that NAFTA “needs to be revisited,” has taken his cues like any other puppet.

When, from this perspective, you examine the global takeover of land and resources by GMO agribusiness, the destruction of small family farms, the plundering of natural resources in the Third World, the use of UN “peacekeepers” and “humanitarian groups” and intelligence agencies to create a wedge, for corporations, into these areas, you see the hand of the Rockefeller plan.

When you see the destruction of currencies and the escalation of insupportable debt, the incursion of a bewildering number of UN-affiliated groups sinking their teeth into local communities all over the planet to “manage sustainable development,” you see the plan.

And when you see “free trade” and no tariffs, you see the essentials nuts and bolts of the plan.

The innocuous -sounding “free trade” policy is the number-one priority of every American president. He must do two things: rarely speak of it, and allow it to move forward. That’s all. In return, he gets to act as if he’s the most powerful man in the world.

But if he wobbles and considers taking up a position against free trade (corporate domination of the planet), he can look back and see what happened to Richard Nixon. He can learn from that example.

He can re-learn the famous words of Zbiggie Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission and David Rockefeller’s intellectual flunkey:

“The nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

Like Jimmy Carter, a president can espouse the most wide-ranging humanitarian philosophy and ascend to a cloud of beautiful altruism, admired by all. As long as he sticks to the plan.

If not, agents and reporters coming out of nowhere will try to demolish him.

—Suddenly, a swaggering, self-congratulatory, fast-talking cowboy named Donald Trump appeared as a presidential candidate. And lo and behold, he attacked Globalism by name. He claimed he would dump it in favor of American nationalism. He repeated this oath many times. And he won the election, unseating a lifelong Globalist named Hillary Clinton.

Whether Trump intends on keeping his promises and going up against the Rockefeller colossus, he has spoken of that which must not be uttered in public: the crimes of Globalism and free trade.

He has let the secret cat out of the bag. He has made people aware…

And for that, he must be punished.

What people are calling the Deep State is the collection of agents who are committed to the Rockefeller plan. They, and their media flunkeys, are swinging for the fences every time they mention Trump. They are doing everything they can to take him down.

***From their perspective, they are launching another Watergate-type operation against another Nixon in the White House.

Another time, “another Nixon”; same basic op.

—In order to protect the titanic, Globalist, corporate control of planet Earth.

This time, the rhetoric and the sentiment for nationalism and against Globalism has already spread across the world. It is percolating and boiling in many places.

Putting the lid back on is a herculean task. Therefore, the agents and reporters are doubling and tripling down on Trump. Even if he turns out to be no more than a symbol of anti-Globalism, they are determined to crush him.

They have their marching orders.

Mere blocks away from the Oval Office, the Community Organizer in Chief, after serving eight years in the White House, is now setting up a parallel presidency, with 30,000 ground-and-pound Leftist dupes at his disposal—all for the purpose of taking down Donald Trump.

You can bet Obama’s bosses have reminded him that he failed at his most important task: shepherding through the free-trade Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty. They intend to collect on their investment. They put him, a no-name, in charge of the nation, in 2008, and he is still their agent. They want results.

Soon.

They want a 2017 version of Watergate.

Another Company Offers Microchip Implants For Workers

Thea — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 19:34:59 +0000

Via Prophecynewswatch.com

Implanting radio frequency identification (RFID) chips has made headlines again as a company in Belgium, NewFusion, has implemented the device for its employees.

Surgically implanted in the hands of its employees, the tiny transmitters broadcast a simple code that allows employees to access company facilities and computer systems.

The chips, now growing in popularity especially in Australia and Europe, are about the size of a grain of rice and range in price from $80-$100.

Placed under the skin between the thumb and index finger, they behave like a traditional electronic key card, yet one that won’t be left home on the kitchen table.

Thankfully, at least for now, NewFusion has offered a chip-enabled ring for those who would prefer to avoid being implanted.

Supporters of the move toward implanted ID chips of course inevitably point to the incredible convenience of embedding your identity number inside your skin, but in their headlong rush to embrace this brave new world, they overlook many of the both obvious and frightening concerns as well as the more mundane drawbacks of “getting chipped”.

As several astute writers have already pointed out, what happens when an employee of NewFusion leaves the company?

Rather than turning a key fob in at the HR office, now a surgical procedure is needed to remove the implant.

It isn’t hard to imagine a world in which enough companies “chip” their employees that a surgical procedure would be required for employment in the same way that a drug test often does today.

For those arguing for convenience, these ambulatory surgeries hardly seem convenient at all.

In the Czech Republic, implanted RFID chips are being used in connection with bitcoin by a nonprofit called Paralelni. Bitcoin, a virtual currency that stores value in a cryptographic blockchain shared around the world, has proven to be a playground for hackers exploiting the digital phenomenon.

The only difference here is that when your bitcoins are taken, you are left with a microchip embedded in your body to remind you of your newly empty bank account.

NewFusion is a digital marketing firm that asks its employees to forego both their comfort and safety all in the name of convenience.

Irreversible Damage – The U.S. Economy Cannot Be Repaired

Thea — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 14:59:17 +0000

Via alt-market.com

As I outlined in my article ‘The False Economic Narrative Will Die In 2017’, the mainstream media has been carefully crafting the propaganda meme that the Trump administration is inheriting a global economy in “ascension,” when in fact, the opposite is true. Trump enters office at a time of longstanding decline and will likely witness severe and accelerated decline over the course of the next year. The signs are already present, and this fits exactly with the basis for my prediction of the Trump election win — conservative movements are indeed being set up as scapegoats for a global economic crisis that international financiers actually created.

Plus, it doesn’t help that Trump keeps boasting about the farcical Dow hitting record highs after his entry into the White House. Talk about the perfect setup…

With the speed at which Trump is issuing executive orders, my concern is that people’s heads will be spinning so fast they will start to assume an appearance of economic progress. Here is the issue — some problems simply cannot be fixed, at least not in a top down fashion. Some disasters cannot be prevented. Sometimes, a crisis has to run its course before a nation or society or economy can return to stability. This is invariably true of the underlying crisis within the U.S. economy.

It is imperative that liberty activists and conservatives avoid false hope in fiscal recovery and remain vigilant and prepared for a breakdown within the system. Despite the sudden political sea change with Trump and the Republican party in majority control of the D.C. apparatus, there is nothing that can be done through government to ease fiscal tensions at this time. Here are some of the primary reasons why:

Government Does Not Create Wealth

Government is a wealth-devouring machine. The bigger the government, the more adept it is at snatching capital and misallocating it. Such a system is inherently unequipped to repair an economy in a stagflationary spiral.

I’m hearing a whole lot of talk lately on all the jobs that will be created through Trump’s infrastructure spending plans, which reminds me of the desperation at the onset of the Great Depression and the efforts by Herbert Hoover to reignite the U.S. economy through a series of public works programs. Reality does not support a successful outcome for this endeavor.

First off, Trump’s ideas for infrastructure spending to kick start a U.S. recovery are not new. The Obama administration and Congress passed the largest transportation spending bill in more than a decade in 2015 and pushed for a similar strategy to what is now being suggested by Trump. I should point out though that like Herbert Hoover, Obama’s efforts in this area were essentially fruitless. Obama was the first president since Hoover to see “official” annual U.S. GDP growth drop below 3 percent for the entirety of his presidency, with GDP in 2016 dropping to a dismal 1.6 percent.

Though projects like the Hoover Dam were epic in scope and electrifying to the public imagination during the Depression, they did little to fuel the overall long-term prospects of the American economy. This is because government is incapable of creating wealth; it can only steal wealth from the citizenry through taxation to pay debts conjured out of thin air, or, it can strike a devil’s bargain with central banks to print its way to fake prosperity.

Some might argue that Trump is more likely to redirect funds from poorly conceived Obama-era programs instead of increasing taxes or printing, but this does not change the bigger picture. Redirected funds are still taxpayer funds, and those funds would be far better spent if they were returned to taxpayers rather than wasted in a vain effort to increase GDP by a percentage point. Beyond this, the number of jobs generated through the process will be a drop in the bucket compared to the 100 million plus people no longer employed within the U.S. at this time.

Bottom line? Though new roads and a wall on the southern border are winners for many conservatives, infrastructure spending is a non-solution in preventing a long-term fiscal disaster.

Interdependency Is Hard To Break

Another prospect for raising funds to pay for job generating public works projects is the use of tariffs on foreign imports. Specifically, imports of goods from countries which have maintained unfair trade advantages through global agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA or the China Trade Bill. This is obviously a practical concept and it was always the intention of the founding father post-revolution for government to generate most of its funding through taxation of foreign imports and interstate commerce, rather than taxation of the hard earned incomes of the citizenry. However, the idea is not without consequences.

Unfortunately, globalists have spent the better part of a half-century ensuring that individual nations are completely financially dependent on one another. The U.S. is at the very CENTER of this interdependency with our currency as the world reserve standard. In order to change the nature of the inderdependent system, we have to change the nature of our participation within that system. This means, in order to assert large tariffs on countries like China (which Trump has suggested), America would have to be willing to sacrifice the main advantage it enjoys within the interdependent model — we would have to sacrifice the dollar’s world reserve status.

Keep in mind, this is likely to be done for us in an aggressive manner by nations like China. China’s considerable dollar and treasury bond holds can be liquidated, and despite claims by mainstream shills, this WILL in fact have destructive effects on the U.S. economy.

Also keep in mind that with higher tariffs come higher prices on the shelf. The majority of goods consumed by Americans come from outside the country. Higher tariffs only work to our advantage when we have a manufacturing base capable of producing the goods we need at prices we can afford. The American manufacturing base within our own nation is essentially nonexistent compared to the Great Depression. In order to levy tariffs we would need a level of production support we simply do not have.

The point is, an unprecedented change in America’s production dynamic would have to happen so that we do not face heavy fiscal consequences for the use of tariffs as an economic weapon.

Manufacturing Takes Time to Rebuild

Much excitement has been garnered by reports that certain U.S. corporations will be bringing some manufacturing back within our borders over the course of Trump’s first term as president. And certainly this is something that needs to happen. We should have never outsourced our manufacturing capability in the first place. But, is this too little too late? I believe so.

I remember back in 2008/2009 mainstream economists were applauding the Federal Reserve’s bailout efforts and the call for quantitative easing, because, they argued, this would diminish the dollar’s value on the global market, which would make American goods less expensive, and by extension inspire a manufacturing renaissance. Of course, this never happened, which only adds to the mountain of evidence proving that most mainstream economists are intellectual idiots.

It is important that we do not fall into the same false-hope trap in 2017. While Trump may or may not handle matters more aggressively, there is only so much that can be accomplished through politics. Rebuilding a manufacturing base after decades of outsourcing takes time. Many years, in fact. Factories have to be commissioned, money has to change many hands, wages have to be scouted for the best possible labor per-dollar spent and people have to be trained from the very ground up in how to produce goods again. In many cases, the skill sets required to maintain functioning factories in the U.S. (from engineers to machinists to assembly line labor to the people who know how to manage it all) just don’t exist anymore. All we have left are millions of retail and food service workers forming mobs to demand $15 an hour, which is simply not going to encourage a return to manufacturing.

Beyond this, at least in the short term, America will have a much stronger dollar on the global market, rather than a weaker dollar, due to the fact that the Federal Reserve has initiated a renewed series of interest rate increases just as Trump entered office. While the mainstream theorizes that the Fed will turn “dovish” and back away from rate hikes, I think this is a rather naive notion. It serves the elites far better to create a battle between Trump and the Fed – therefore, I see no reason for the Fed to back away from its rate hike process. Trump will demand a weaker dollar, the Fed won’t give it to him, and ultimately, the global economy will start to see the dollar as a risky venture and dump it as the world reserve; which is what the globalist have wanted all along so that they can introduce the SDR as a bridge to a new world currency.

With a “strong” dollar (relative to other indexes) there is even LESS incentive for foreign nations to buy our goods now than there was after the credit crisis in 2008. If the dollar loses world reserve status (as I believe it will during Trump’s first term), then at that point we will have a swiftly falling currency — but too swift to fuel a manufacturing reboot.

Is there even enough internal wealth to support the rise of manufacturing within the U.S. for a period of time necessary for our economy to rebalance? If there is I’m not seeing it. We are a nation mired in debt. So much so that even selling off our natural resources would not erase the problem.

Ultimately, the shift away from being tied to a globalized system towards a self-contained producer nation with a citizenry wealthy enough to sustain that production in light of limited exports to foreign buyers is a shift that requires incredible foresight, precision and ample time. It is not something that can be ramrodded into existence through force or by government decree. In fact, the act of trying to force the change haphazardly will only agitate an economy already on the verge of calamity.

Solutions Start With the Citizenry, Not Washington

I understand that conservatives in particular want to “make America great again,” and I fully agree with that goal. But, someone has to point out the inconsistencies in the current strategy and recognize that the situation is beyond repair. To make America great again would require decentralized efforts to maximize production and self-reliance at a local level, not centralized federal tinkering with the economy. The globalists have been far too thorough in their programs of interdependency. The only way out now is for the system to crash and for the right people to be in place to rebuild.

Sadly, not only will a crash result in great tragedy for many Americans, but it is also an outcome the globalists prefer. They believe that THEY will be the men in the right place at the right time to rebuild the system in an even more centralized fashion. They hope to sacrifice the old world order to inspire the social desperation needed to convince the masses of the need for a “new world order.” Again, this crash cannot be avoided, it can only be mitigated. We can prepare and become self-sufficient. We can fight to ensure that the globalists are not in a position to rebuild the system in their image once the dust settles. But, we should not place too much expectation that the Trump administration will be able to solve any of our economic problems, if that is even their intent. The solution remains in our hands, not in the hands of the White House.

And the ultimate solution has been laid out from the foundation of the world. All we have to do is accept it.

UK Government Proposes “Fantastically Dangerous” University Reforms Pandering To ‘Snowflake’ Demands

Thea — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 14:37:29 +0000

Via Zerohedge.com

With social justice warriors everywhere still sobbing across the globe after sexist, racist, bigoted, misogynists, anti-semite, satan-worshipping, Putin-puppet (did we miss one?) Donald Trump’s election victory, it appears the special safe-space-seekers may be about to get a win in Britain where universities will be forced to pander to the demands of ‘snowflake’ students if controversial reforms placing student satisfaction at the heart of a new ranking system, are approved.

As “safe space” and “no platform” movements have swept across campuses, The Telegraph reports, the Government faces a cross-party revolt in the Lords this week over proposed reforms to higher education, which include placing student satisfaction at the heart of a new ranking system.

It is feared that this will lead to a “fantastically dangerous” culture where authorities will give in to student demands, however unreasonable they may be.

Baroness Wolf, a professor at King’s College London (KCL), warned: “Universities are increasingly nervous about doing anything that will create overt dissatisfaction among students because they are being told that student satisfaction is key.

“It has had a real effect on the willingness of universities to stand up to student demands which in the past have been removing statues, safe spaces and no-platforming. This whole movement is a direct threat to academic standards and the ability of universities to stand up for freedom of speech.”

She added: “The student satisfaction measure is fantastically dangerous. The way to make students happy is not asking them to do any work and giving them a high grade.

“This will reduce standards and undermine quality. I just think this is totally mad, and destructive of everything universities stand for.”

The Higher Education and Research Bill, championed by Universities Minister Jo Johnson (below), will reach committee stage in the Lords on Monday, where is expected to be subject to a barrage of criticism.

As a gentle reminder to all those moribund Millennials, The Only Safe Space Is Your Home

No matter where you go in life, someone will be there to offend you. Maybe it’s a joke you overheard on vacation, a spat at the office, or a difference of opinion with someone in line at the grocery store. Inevitably, someone will offend you and your values. If you cannot handle that without losing control of your emotions and reverting back to your “safe space” away from the harmful words of others, then you’re best to just stay put at home. Remember, though: if people in the outside world scare you, people on the internet will downright terrify you. It’s probably best to just accept these harsh realities of life and go out into the world prepared to confront them wherever they may be waiting.

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” (Proverbs 27:17)

„Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end.” (Prov 19:20)

‘Fixer Uppers’ Strike Back Against BuzzFeed Bullying

Thea — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 14:31:48 +0000

We need to give the Gaines’ credit for finding a classy way to navigate this faux “controversy” without compromising their belief system.

We all agree that Christians should be unafraid to profess the Biblical truth on any subject, whether it’s gay marriage or anything else. But at the same time, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be baited by those who are dishonest and insincere and uninterested in dialogue.

Notice that Christ refused to speak to Herod or answer any of his questions. Not because Christ was afraid or ashamed, obviously, but because Herod was not interested in the answers. He was trying to make a spectacle of Him, and Our Lord would not cooperate.

I think it’s appropriate and wise to utilize that strategy in our culture sometimes, just as Chip and Joanna have done here. They’ve said, essentially, “We stand by our beliefs but we are not going to get into this with you because you are not sincere or genuine. You just want to find something to use against us.”

A very good and discerning approach. Well done.

Via faithit.com

TV’s favorite power couple, Chip and Joanna Gaines, are taking time to renovate in 2017—but not the way they are known for in their hit HGTV show, Fixer Upper.

The Waco, Texas, couple is riding the waves of success with the most popular show on HGTV, a New York Times Best Selling book, multiple retail shops, a real estate business, hundreds of home renovations, and they were just recently credited with revitalizing the city of Waco with their show and businesses.

Joanna’s farmhouse style design aesthetic, and her undying love for both shiplap and her husband, combined with Chip’s goofiness, demolition excitement and adoration for his sweet wife, continues to make us all wish Chip and JoJo were our best friends. (And neighbors—could you make my house look like that?)

A controversial (and downright silly) BuzzFeed article was published on Nov. 29., criticizing the couple for being members of a church whose pastor has allegedly spoken out against homosexuality.

Pastor Jimmy Seibert delivered a message in 2015, following the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage. He defends his beliefs saying, “God defined what marriage is—not you, or I, or anyone. God defined what male and female are. As a person of faith, I just decided that God’s going to be right.”

Naturally, because of the Gaines’ success, and their affiliation with the church, the controversial message became a question of their character, and that of HGTV.

Since the the article was published, the renovation power couple has remained virtually silent—until now.

Chip took to the Magnolia blog on Jan. 2, more than a month after controversy broke. His post is nothing short of what we would expect from the Gaines family—extremely classy, witty and full of Jesus. He shared his heart, and the couple’s desire to “renovate in 2017.”

Jo and I sometimes don’t see eye to eye on stuff. She looks at something one way and in her gut she thinks she’s right and I look at it an entirely different way. I wish that she could get with the program and just see things the way that I do. (Of course, I’m kidding – we all know Jo’s usually right.) If Joanna and I, who are best friends, don’t see lots of things the same way – how on earth do we expect a world of strangers to magically align? The reality is, we may not all get on the same page and I think that’s okay.

This past year has been tough. In my lifetime, I can’t recall humanity being more divided. Plenty of folks are sad and scared and angry and there are sound bites being fed to us that seem fueled by judgement, fear and even hatred. Jo and I refuse to be baited into using our influence in a way that will further harm an already hurting world, this is our home. A house divided cannot stand.

Preach it Chip!

If there is any hope for all of us to move forward, to heal and to grow – we have got to learn to engage people who are different from us with dignity and with love. Joanna and I have personal convictions. One of them is this: we care about you for the simple fact that you are a person, our neighbor on planet earth. It’s not about what color your skin is, how much money you have in the bank, your political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender, nationality or faith. That’s all fascinating, but it cannot add or take away from the reality that we’re already pulling for you. We are not about to get in the nasty business of throwing stones at each other, don’t ask us to ’cause we won’t play that way.

In 2017: We have decided to change the conversation.

You wanna talk about how to build bridges between people that disagree? We want to be a part of that conversation. Do you want to talk about healing and compassion and kindness and restoration? We’re in the restoration business, we can for sure make time for that.

I think we are all here for a reason. I think we all have a call on our lives. Your role is not my role, and thank goodness, because there is so much unique and important work to be done. Jo and I feel called to be bridge builders. We want to help initiate conversations between people that don’t think alike. Listen to me, we do not all have to agree with each other. Disagreement is not the same thing as hate, don’t believe that lie.

Also, let’s cut each other a little slack. This living out loud thing is not for the faint of heart. Jo and I don’t want to hide, we want to live brave & bold lives and we wish that same thing for you as well. But words can cut deep and having someone misunderstand your intentions can hurt as much as just about anything. If I misjudge people and am wrong, I want to be wrong having assumed the best about them. The bottom line is, I would rather be loving than be right.

Our family wants to fight for a world that knows how to lovingly disagree. We believe it starts when we operate from a position of love in all things. If your position only extends love to the people who agree with you, we want to respectfully challenge that position. We propose operating with a love so real and true that you are willing to roll up your sleeves and work alongside the very people that are most unlike you. Fear dissolves in close proximity. Our stereotypes and vain imaginations fall away when we labor side by side. This is how a house gets unified.

Think about it for a minute: This could be one of the greatest restoration stories of all time.

Who’s ready to get to work?

Despite one bad editor trying to take down one of America’s favorite couples, members of the LGBT community have come to the Gaines’ defense.

In wake of an attack on their character and beliefs, Chip and JoJo have once again proven the power of grace and love in a world full of hate.

Pediatrician group speaks out against National Geographic’s 9-year old ‘trans’ cover

Thea — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 14:51:59 +0000

Via The Blaze

The American College of Pediatricians is speaking out against National Geographic’s decision to put a 9-year-old on their January cover who identifies as a transgender.

The magazine, which has been in publication for 128 years, made headlines when it decided to highlight what it called “the gender revolution” in its January 2017 issue. The issue displayed pictures and a story of a 9-year-old boy named Avery, whose parents say he identifies as a girl.

American College of Pediatricians president Michelle Cretella said that National Geographic is “promoting a political agenda over science and the wellbeing of innocent children” by displaying the young child as the face for their first ever transgender cover.

“Affirming so called transgender children means sterilizing them as young as 11-years-old,” Dr Cretella told Lifesite News. “Puberty blockers plus cross-sex hormones causes permanent sterility. And biological girls who ‘transition’ to male by taking testosterone may have a double mastectomy at age 16. The life time use of cross-sex hormones also puts these children at risk for stroke, heart disease, diabetes, cancers and more.”

Cretella says that enabling a young child to become a transgender is harmful and based on illogical reasoning. “When a child under the age of 12 thinks they are the opposite sex and is allowed to naturally pass through puberty, 75%-95% of the time that child will accept his or her biological sex by the late teen years.”

She also added that the American College of Pediatrician’s position is that medical facilities supporting a child’s “transgenderism” is basically child abuse.

“When academic, medical and other public institutions propagate the lifetime use of toxic hormones and the surgical removal of healthy body parts as healthcare for children, they are engaged in institutionalized child abuse,” Cretella said.

Muslims In Aleppo Meet Christians For The First Time – And Are Shocked By What They Discover

Thea — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 17:33:58 +0000

Via Christiantoday.com

Muslims in Aleppo have started mixing with Christians for the first time and some are even going to churches.

The relentless bombing and fighting is heaviest in Muslim parts of Aleppo as so many Muslims have fled to Christian areas to seek refuge, the Christian persecution charity World Watch Monitor reports.

“Many Muslims were genuinely surprised when they met Christian women in our churches willing to serve them,” said Kristina, 28, a Christian who fled from the city after having her first child. “Their image was that all Christian women spend most of their days dancing in night clubs and drinking alcohol! Meeting each other was a shock, both for them and for us.”

Kristina was safely in Lebanon when she spoke to a representative from World Watch Monitor which reports her story today.

She said nine out of ten Christians in her church had fled Aleppo, but her friends still in the city have told her the church is full because their places have been taken – by displaced Muslims. They are going to church to take part in classes organised to help them cope amid the chaos and destruction.

They are particularly drawn to activities laid on for children, and many have been surprised to find that the churches are trying to help all Syrians, not just Christians.

“Many are re-thinking the faith they grew up in and have dropped their hostility towards Christians,” Kristina told World Watch Monitor.

The Muslim mothers do not even mind that their children are hearing the Bible read each day.

Kristina said: “The mothers are okay with that. They see it as positive if their children learn about God. It’s the husbands who are stricter, usually.”

She said the Muslim women felt “liberated” in church.

“They notice the church doesn’t see them as merely machines only fit for cleaning, giving birth to children, and raising them, like many Muslim men do.

“In Islam, many women don’t have any rights. When they feel how Christians really care for them, it feels like heaven for those women. They see it’s possible to live as independent women, to dream.”

She said that his was the first time ever that Muslims were approaching the churches.

“The only thing we have to do is tell them the good news; they are waiting for it.”

EU Just Voted To Create Its Own Army, Britain May Be Forced To Pay For It ? In Spite Of Brexit

Thea — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 11:42:29 +0000

Via Activist Post

Members of the European Parliament, or MEPs, have passed a controversial resolution, calling on all member states to contribute funds for the establishment of a European Defense Union. In a press release issued on the 22^nd of November, the European Union (EU) passed a resolution calling on all MEPs to contribute 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the formation of said military force.

The resolution comes in the wake of Brexit, the U.K?s decision to pull out of the EU. Brexit, a referendum to withdraw from the EU was passed June 23^rd, 2016, with 52 percent of voters deciding to pull out and 48 percent voting to stay in. The UK?s intention to withdraw from the EU has apparently created a military power vacuum, leaving the EU weaker militarily.

Tuesday?s resolution marks the first time in the history of the EU that the collective of MEPs has decided to create its own military force, defense budget, and proposed training site. In short, the EU is creating its own fighting force which pledges to work in unison across international borders.

According to the press release, the EU listed a number of reasons for creating an EU military. ?Terrorism, hybrid threats and cyber- and energy insecurity leave EU countries no choice but to step up their security and defense [sic] cooperation efforts, thus paving the way to a European Defense [sic] Union,? it reads. The type of terrorism alluded to in the statement must surely be Islam-inspired jihad attacks, which have been wreaking havoc in many parts of the EU, including France, Germany, Turkey, Belgium.

The resolution, which passed Tuesday, suggests MEPs devote 2% of each country?s GDP for the ?establishing (of) multinational forces and (an) EU headquarters to plan and command crisis management operations, and enabling the EU to act where NATO is unwilling to do so.? The significance of the statement cannot be overlooked. Each of the EU countries already has a military, police forces, and intelligence services, but they?ve just announced they?re joining forces to create one, potentially, more powerful defense (and offense) force, all under the direction of one central command.

The resolution may also serve as a knee-jerk response to statements President-Elect Donald Trump made during the presidential campaign which suggested he was in favor of pulling out of NATO. Of the 28 member states in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created in 1949, only 3 countries, the U.S., Britain, and Greece, actually spend the pledged 2% of their GDP on defense. Trump told the Washington Post in March, it?s time to change that arrangement. ?We certainly can?t afford to do this anymore,? ?NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we?re protecting Europe with NATO, but we?re spending a lot of money,? he said. As a result, the EU may be taking the billionaire businessman, now future president of the U.S., at his word, and taking their security measures a bit more seriously than they were pre-Trump.

The press release continues, ?MEPs want the Union to respond faster and more robustly to real threats, which, they say, demand that Europe?s armed forces work together better.? Implied Translation: cross-border military forces, with quick-strike capability.

Going further, the statement reads, ?MEPs call on member states to pursue joint purchases of defense [sic] resources, and to pool or share non-lethal material such as transport vehicles or aircraft.? While it may start with ?non-lethal? implementations, if the EU?s new joint military force progresses, it could mean that the EU will, in essence, become the world?s next superpower, equipped with the very same nuclear weapons many of its members now possess. France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands already possess such weapons. Could this new EU central command also wield the power to launch such weapons if attacked? Such questions are still unanswered.

The resolution also calls for ?An EU headquarters? to ?be set up to plan and command crisis management operations.? Modeling their new defense union after NATO, the resolution says, ?EU member states should aim to spend 2% of GDP on defense [sic] and should establish multinational forces within the Permanent Structured Cooperation and make these forces available to the common security and defense [sic] policy.?

Alluding once again to the possibility the United States, under Trump?s leadership, may pull out of NATO, the resolution calls on closer cooperation with NATO but insists, ?the EU should also be prepared to act autonomously in cases where NATO is not willing to take the lead.?

Strictly interpreting the resolution?s press release may lead some to believe the Union is in the birth pangs of creating its own unified military force. This may or may not be the case. While each MEP is still sovereign and a part of the overall EU, the resolution to militarize the EU could lead to diminishing sovereignty, much like members of the UK felt just before passing Brexit. It must also be noted, the measure was not agreed upon by all MEPs. Of those MEPs who voted, 369 voted for the resolution, 255 against it, and 70 abstained from voting, which may lead some to conclude the EU is not as united as it must be in order to create its own military. The move may lead other member states to follow Britain?s lead and begin to pull out of the EU.

It must also be noted, the measure was not agreed upon by all MEPs. Of those MEPs who voted, 369 voted for the resolution, 255 against it, and 70 abstained from voting, which may lead some to conclude the EU is not as united as it must be in order to create its own military. The move may lead other member states to follow Britain?s lead and begin to pull out.

According to reports, the U.K. may not yet be off the hook for funding the EU?s new military. As RT reported, ?If the UK proves incapable of untangling itself from the plan it could be required to shell out up to ?420 million per year.?

Also worth noting is the fact the EU?s new army calls for a defense minister and for EU army troops to train in Iraq. The press release reads the EU army will be, ?launching a training operation in Iraq to support member states involved in the coalition against Daesh.? Who would that person be, how much power would he or she possess, and why would the EU Army be deployed first to Iraq. These questions and more have many scratching their heads.

‘Ecosexuality’ is on the rise, and it is exactly what it sounds like

Thea — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 13:16:22 +0000

While environmentalists have always espoused something of a religious dedication to mother nature, at least for those not in it for the money, it was always viewed as something acceptable — and even good — by much of the first world. There’s been heated disagreement about this, especially from conservationists, but as it stands environmentalism is one of today’s most in vogue causes.

But if we thought environmentalism, with some of its most ardent supporters suggesting prison time for “deniers,” and holding journalists hostage inside protest camps, was extreme, then brace yourself, because we have yet to find the bottom of environmentalism’s well of weird.

Recently, an article came out in Vice that detailed the practice of “ecosexuality.” To put it bluntly, these are enviro-activists who believe that having sex with the earth is somehow good for both it, and you.

But it’s more than just strapping some parsley to your face, and getting sensual with an oak tree. According to Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens, two modern artists and environmental activists, this is a kind of sexuality that involves actual love for the earth, both philia and eros. It’s a kind of bond they wanted to bring into the mainstream, and they set out to do just that by putting on stage shows, and opening a “bath house”:

It wasn’t until 2008 that it began its evolution toward a fully-fledged social movement, when Sprinkle and Stephens began officiating ecosexual weddings. The two artists had been active in the marriage equality movement, and they wanted to harness that energy for environmental causes. Stephens has said that their aim was to reconceptualize the way we look at the earth, from seeing the planet as a mother to seeing it as a lover.

According to sociologist Jennifer Reed at the University of Nevada, ecosexuality has been around since the early 2000s, when it began appearing on dating profiles. She says that now, the ecosexual movement has seen a marked increase in people choosing it as their sexual preference in the past two years.

Sprinkle and Stephens even led a group of more than 100 ecosexuals in San Francisco’s pride parade in a ribbon cutting, that added an “E” to the LGBT lineup.

While this group is concerned about protecting the environment, it’s not falling in line with some of the more popular advocates of environmentalism you’ve seen thus far, as UNLV School of Community Health Sciences’ Amanda Morgan lays out:

Morgan describes ecosexuality as a means of moving beyond the “depressing Al Gore stuff” that people often associate with environmentalism. Her hope, and that of other ecosexuals … is that it can gives the average person a way of engaging with the issue that is accessible and fun, and that creates a sense of hopefulness.

In the end, it is a roundabout way of getting to the same goal shared by most enviro-activists. There will not be many TED talks given about ecosexuality by politicians or institutions, but the druidism is there, and more intense nevertheless.

If you think this is too extreme, and will never make it to the mainstream, then I would remind you that this is 2016. If anything, this year has taught us to take nothing off the table.

When Good People Share Bad Info – Here’s Why You Need to Fact Check before You Click Share

Thea — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:10:13 +0000

Via Activist Post

Disinformation. Misinformation. Propaganda. Outright lies. Purposeful distractions. Misleading bias. All tools of the government and close ally, corporate media, to keep the public unwise to the depth and breadth of imperialistic actions taking place around the world — and ever-encroaching surveillance and police states inside the borders of the United States.

Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to begin pulling back the curtain on the inner workings of the government — the tandem dealings by politicians, regardless of party affiliation — to exploit the public in as many ways possible for the profits of elite politicians, corporations, industries, and banks.

And what frequently starts as a trickle of paradigm-shifting new information, quickly forces open the floodgates — as the realization things aren’t at all as they hammered into your psyche for years through State-sponsored indoctrination of public education. It can be overwhelming — and you likely want to ‘wake up’ others to this reality — but there are pitfalls in doing so, marked by the same tactics the State employed to fool you in the first place.

Disinformation. Misinformation. Propaganda. Outright lies. Purposeful distractions. Misleading bias.

Sound familiar?

With the sheer amplitude and magnitude of corruption exposed on a daily basis in the lead-up to the November 8th presidential election, alerting friends and family could seem more imperative than ever — but the aforementioned traps should and must be avoided at all costs — even when it comes from outlets posing as an answer to the mainstream. Let it be noted, that is not to decry credible, consistent independent and alternative media outlets — but it’s crucial to employ critical thinking and a bit of research to separate those with integrity from the mendacious and misleading.

Spreading misinformation, false reports, and surreptitious propaganda does nothing to further the cause of truth — and, in fact, serves more to harm the credibility of legitimate reports in opposition to the dominant State narrative. Social media, however, has provided plenty of dry tinder for faulty info to spread like wildfire — either by the haplessly unaware, or by those with motives to ensure it quickly disseminates to cast doubt in the public mind.

But there are a number of ways to divine authentic, genuine information from that meant to distract, divide, discredit, and delegitimize.

Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines ‘disinformation’ as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.”

So common is disinformation, those familiar with it will destroy said item with facts before it gains traction in public forums — but rumors being rumors, sometimes take on a life of their own. Checking whether or not a new report has any basis is usually as easy as a web search for secondary reports from known credible sources parroting the same claim — indeed, one surefire clue a report might be false, or even satire, is a lack of hyperlinks to other sources.

Misinformation, on the other hand, can present a trickier issue in that it can have at least a kernel of truth at its core — but the packaging, which can include blatant lies or opinion misconstrued as fact, intends to mislead.

Political and elections polls tilt public opinion, and — when convincing — can even dissuade people from voting on candidates and issues they might otherwise deem critical. In fact, selectively cherry-picking a sampling pool — or crafting targeted questions — will dramatically and sometimes ridiculously fit results to glean a desired answer. Zero Hedge, for example, caught ABC News and the Washington Post in the act over the weekend, after their joint poll showed Hillary Clinton with a double-digit lead over Donald Trump — despite increasingly heated controversy from John Podesta’s leaked emails.

Every government on the planet employs propaganda to garner favor for policy and legislation — and more subtly to inculcate the citizenry into hollow feelings of nationalism, which serves little purpose other than fueling separation and pride based on the arbitrary geopolitical happenstance of one’s birth. Although the most cunning propaganda is virtually imperceptible, this year’s narrative of Russian aggression couldn’t be more patently obvious if it tried.

However, that’s not to say the same idea of a Russian threat hasn’t also crept into reports from supposed ‘analysts,’ as well. A number of generally credible outlets, rather than presenting analysis with open-ended outcomes, have taken the government’s cue to warn of impending nuclear war at Pres. Vladimir Putin’s behest — despite a lack of evidence to back the claim. Fearmongering, it should be noted, is a common tool of propagandists worldwide.

Outright lies and deliberate distractions go hand-in-hand when it comes to parsing truth from fiction — and an unfortunately growing number of tabloid-esque outlets peddle absurd lies as truth in the interest of getting clicks. Notably, differentiating tabloid sites from credible alternative sources can be the most difficult to the newly ‘awakening’ truth-seeker.

A fine line exists between attention-grabbing headlines topping truthful articles and head-turning captions screaming wholesale lies. Indeed, considering the populace-at-large now champions an attention span less than that of a goldfish, convincing readers to venture past the first two sentences of a legitimate article can be the most frustrating facet of the job of independent media journalist. Scammers and profit-seekers capitalize on the fact most will share a link without ever bothering to view its contents — no matter if the work constitutes so much garbage.

Although it isn’t an absolute guarantee, a wise axiom to follow stands the test of time: If it sounds too good or too absurd to be true, it probably is. If you’re still uncertain, ask someone you trust, seek a second and third and fourth source, and, above all, do a little digging — after all, the Internet puts the world at everyone’s fingertips.

Journalism is not meant to be devoid of bias — on the contrary, good journalism persuades. However, bias can be employed in the extreme, easily bordering on misinformation. A topic proffered by FOX News and MSNBC will never be reported the same way — each has clear political bias and an agenda to push. Bias doesn’t have to be quite so flagrant to be effective.

So-called political pundits are a common tool used by corporate media to subtly infuse bias by appealing to the public trust of a putative ‘expert’ in the particular topic of discussion — and pundits are usually just political or party insiders, ex-government employees, and others with a vested interest in ensuring public opinion sways in a certain direction. Also, pundits and experts nearly always receive compensation for their input.

A stellar recent example of a biased opinion presented as expert assessment came from former assistant FBI director James Kallstrom — a known devotee of presidential candidate Donald Trump — who castigated the Clintons for being a “crime family.” While that point is debatable, the fact Kallstrom appeared as a former official of the government connoted insider knowledge — an appeal to his ostensible authority — and his diatribe went viral nearly immediately for its incendiary nature. It isn’t so much that his opinion didn’t deserve to be shared, but that it needed to be considered in light of his political desires — his characterization of the Clintons directly feeds Kallstrom’s desire for Trump to win the White House.

While each of these topics could and have filled tomes, hopefully this provides a gentle reminder to be wary of believing everything you read. As any journalist worth their salt will say, if you don’t believe what’s written, research it on your own. Follow links provided. Seek new information. Open your mind to new ideas and be willing to part with indoctrinated thoughts that no longer serve you.

But don’t be fooled — and it behooves all of us not to spread the sort of faulty information that discredits the general movement to expose the government’s innumerable lies.

The Dark Agenda behind Globalism and Open Borders

Thea — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 08:52:35 +0000

Via alt-market.com

When people unfamiliar with the liberty movement stumble onto the undeniable fact of the ?conspiracy? of globalism they tend to look for easy answers to understand what it is and why it exists. Most people today have been conditioned to perceive events from a misinterpreted standpoint of ?Occam?s Razor? ? they wrongly assume that the simplest explanation is probably the right one.

In fact, this is not what Occam?s Razor states. Instead, to summarize, it states that the simplest explanation GIVEN THE EVIDENCE at hand is probably the right explanation.

It has been well known and documented for decades that the push for globalism is a deliberate and focused effort on the part of a select ?elite;? international financiers, central bankers, political leaders and the numerous members of exclusive think tanks. They often openly admit their goals for total globalization in their own publications, perhaps believing that the uneducated commoners would never read them anyway. Carroll Quigley, mentor to Bill Clinton and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is often quoted with open admissions to the general scheme:

?The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland; a private bank owned and controlled by the world?s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank? sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.? – Carroll Quigley, Tragedy And Hope

The people behind the effort to enforce globalism are tied together by a particular ideology, perhaps even a cult-like religion, in which they envision a world order as described in Plato?s Republic. They believe that they are ?chosen? either by fate, destiny or genetics to rule as philosopher kings over the rest of us. They believe that they are the wisest and most capable that humanity has to offer, and that through evolutionary means, they can create chaos and order out of thin air and mold society at will.

This mentality is evident in the systems that they build and exploit. For example, central banking in general is nothing more than a mechanism for driving nations into debt, currency devaluation, and ultimately, enslavement through widespread economic extortion. The end game for central banks is, I believe, the triggering of historic financial crisis, which can then be used by the elites as leverage to promote complete global centralization as the only viable solution.

This process of destabilizing economies and societies is not directed by the heads of the various central banks. Instead, it is directed by even more central global institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, as outlined in revealing mainstream articles like Ruling The World Of Money published by Harpers Magazine.

We also find through the words of globalists that the campaign for a ?new world order? is not meant to be voluntary.

?? When the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ? will hate the new world order ? and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.? – HG Welles, Fabian Socialist and author of The New World Order

?In short, the ?house of world order? will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ?booming, buzzing confusion,? to use William James? famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.? – Richard Gardner, member of the Trilateral Commission, published in the April, 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs

?The New World Order cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the single most significant component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change its perceptions.? – Henry Kissinger, World Action Council, April 19, 1994

I could quote globalists all day long, but I think you get the general idea. While some people see globalism as a ?natural offshoot? of free markets or the inevitable outcome of economic progress, the reality is that the simplest explanation (given the evidence at hand) is that globalism is an outright war waged against the ideal of sovereign peoples and nations. It is a guerrilla war, or fourth generation warfare, waged by a small group of elites against the rest of us.

A significant element of this war concerns the nature of borders. Borders of nations, states and even towns and villages, are not just lines on a map or invisible barriers in the dirt. This is what the elites and the mainstream media would like us to believe. Instead, borders when applied correctly represent principles; or at least, that is supposed to be their function.

Human beings are natural community builders; we are constantly seeking out others of like-mind and like-purpose because we understand subconsciously that groups of individuals working together can (often but not always) accomplish more. That said, human beings also have a natural tendency to value individual freedom and the right to voluntary association. We do not like to be forced to associate with people or groups that do not hold similar values.

Cultures erect borders because, frankly, people have the right to vet those who wish to join and participate in their endeavors. People also have a right to discriminate against anyone who does not share their core values; or, in other words, we have the right to refuse association with other groups and ideologies that are destructive to our own.

Interestingly, globalists and their mouthpieces will argue that by refusing to associate with those who might undermine our values, it is WE who are violating THEIR rights. See how that works?

Globalists exploit the word ?isolationism? to shame sovereignty champions in the eyes of the public, but there is no shame in isolation when such principles as freedom of speech and expression or the right to self defense are on the line. There is also nothing wrong with isolating a prosperous economic model from unsuccessful economic models. Forcing a decentralized free market economy to adopt feudal administration through central banking and government will eventually destroy that model. Forcing a free market economy into fiscal interdependencey with socialist economies will also most likely undermine that culture. Just as importing millions of people with differing values to feed on a nation after it has had socialism thrust upon it is a recipe for collapse.

The point is, some values and social structures are mutually exclusive; no matter how hard you try, certain cultures can never be homogenized with other cultures. You can only eliminate one culture to make room for the other in a border-less world. This is what globalists seek to achieve. It is the greater purpose behind open border policies and globalization – to annihilate ideological competition so that humanity thinks it has no other option but the elitist religion. The ultimate end game of globalists is not to control governments (governments are nothing more than a tool). Rather, their end game is to obtain total psychological influence and eventually consent from the masses.

Variety and choice have to be removed from our environment in order for globalism to work, which is a nice way to say that many people will have to die and many principles will have to be erased from the public consciousness. The elites assert that their concept of a single world culture is the pinnacle principle of mankind, and that there is no longer any need for borders because no other principle is superior to theirs. As long as borders as a concept continue to exist there is always the chance of separate and different ideals rising to compete with the globalist philosophy. This is unacceptable to the elites.

This has led not so subtle propaganda meme that cultures that value sovereignty over globalism are somehow seething cauldrons of potential evil. Today, with the rising tide of anti-globalist movements, the argument in the mainstream is that ?populists? (conservatives) are of a lower and uneducated class and are a dangerous element set to topple the ?peace and prosperity? afforded by globalist hands. In other words, we are treated like children scrawling with our finger paints across a finely crafted Mona Lisa. Once again, Carroll Quigley promotes (or predicts) this propaganda decades in advance when he discusses the need for ?working within the system? for change instead of fighting against it:

?For example, I?ve talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty generally in this group.? – Carroll Quigley, from Dissent: Do We Need It?

The problem is that these people refuse to confront the fruits of globalization that can be observed so far. Globalists have had free reign over most of the world’s governments for at least a century, if not longer. As a consequence of their influences, we have had two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Great Recession which is still ongoing, too many regional conflicts and genocides to count and the systematic oppression of free agent entrepreneurs, inventors and ideas to the point that we are now suffering from social and financial stagnation.

The globalists have long been in power, yet, the existence of borders is blamed for the storm of crises we have endured for the past hundred years? Liberty champions are called ?deplorable? populists and fascists while globalists dodge blame like slimy slithering eels?

This is the best card the globalists have up their sleeve, and it is the reason why I continue to argue that they plan to allow conservative movements to gain a measure of political power in the next year, only to pull the plug on international fiscal life support and blame us for the resulting tragedy.

There is no modicum of evidence to support the notion that globalization, interdependency and centralization actually work. One need only examine the economic and immigration nightmare present in the EU to understand this. So, the globalists will now argue that the world is actually not centralized ENOUGH. That?s right; they will claim we need more globalization, not less, to solve the world?s ailments.

In the meantime, principles of sovereignty have to be historically demonized ? the concept of separate cultures built on separate beliefs has to be psychologically equated with evil by future generations. Otherwise, the globalists will never be able to successfully establish a global system without borders.

Imagine, for a moment, an era not far away in which the principle of sovereignty is considered so abhorrent, so racist, so violent and poisonous that any individual would be shamed or even punished by the collective for entertaining the notion. Imagine a world in which sovereignty and conservatism are held up to the next generation as the new ?original sins;? dangerous ideas that almost brought about the extinction of man.

This mental prison is where globalists want to take us…

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… a prison without borders where globalized thinking will replace passports and provide the “freedom” to exist.

When Jesus came into the world, His own received Him not, because they expected a political kingdom that would overthrow Rome and lead them to prosperity. They sought a physical kingdom, and they couldn?t see the more powerful kingdom that was making its way into the world through Jesus himself that will still stand when globalism will have passed from even our faintest memories.

Come, be an eternal citizen of this kingdom!

Sweden, ‘Least Religious Nation in West,’ Opens Its First Atheist Cemetery – With Church Blessing

Thea — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 15:13:31 +0000

Via Christian Today

In this European country, atheism has become so popular that its influence extends even to the grave. The country is Sweden, which has now opened its first atheist cemetery.

More surprisingly to some people, the Church of Sweden has given its nod to the project, even saying that they will help maintain the graves, but will not be involved in other stages, The Local reported. The cemetery is located near a church called Stora Tuna.

However, such a reaction is not really surprising as far as the Swedish Church is concerned. This is because many of its members are atheist, according to Gunnar Sjöberg, head of communication for the Swedish Church, in an earlier report from The Local.

“…To be a member [of the Church of Sweden] is not just to do with your personal beliefs. Many Swedes are supporting the social work we are doing, so that is one reason we have a lot of members. People know we need the church in Sweden even if they are not believers,” Sjöberg said.

Since it’s an atheist cemetery, it will be devoid of any and all religious symbols.

The cemetery is opening in Borlänge in central Sweden, a country sometimes referred to as the “least religious nation in the Western world.”

“There’s a place on this earth for everybody and we shouldn’t be limited in how we choose to live or how we choose to be buried,” said Josef Erdem, the teacher who first thought of putting up such a cemetery.

He said the cemetery is not only for deceased atheists since it would also accept religious people as long as they agree beforehand that no religious symbols would be placed on their graves.

“People can decide for themselves what their graves should look like, but the cemetery will be free of all religious and nationalist symbols,” Erdem said.

The cemetery remains unoccupied for now, but several Swedes have already expressed an interest in the place as their final resting place.

“I don’t want a burial place with a stone that needs to be cared for. I also don’t want a church burial because I’m not a believer so this suits me great,” teacher Gunnar Lindgren told broadcaster SVT.

Erdem said he has spoken to many people, including the religious, about his project, and that their response “has been overwhelmingly positive.”

This is not surprising since a 2014 study found that nearly eight out of 10 Swedes are either “not religious” or “convinced atheists.”

The WIN/Gallup International poll at the time found that only China, Hong Kong and Japan have a greater proportion of atheists than Sweden.

Microchip Implants Being Marketed as Human Body Enhancements

Thea — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 19:22:19 +0000

Via Prophecynewswatch.com

Microchipping of animals for medical and tracking experiments has gradually become acceptable, but humans? Whoa, not so fast! Privacy proponents, conspiracy theorists and faith-based groups have consistently warned of the dangers from their various viewpoints.

And yet, those nagging concerns are slowly fading, as people become conditioned to embracing the attendant security and convenience while shrugging off the risks.

This transition has been made easier by a subtle but powerful change in strategy that fights the psychological barriers: microchip implants for human beings are now being marketed as enhancements to the human body; the creation of a ‘superman’, of sorts.

And this change in approach seems to be working. In a recent report, organicandhealthy.org described Australia as the first country to begin microchipping its population. As recounted in the report, back in 2010 CBS news reported that the Australian government had a potential RFID microchipping plan in the works related to the health care system.

Now, as this plan begins to unfold, the push is not a result of mandated health care reforms, but rather a clever propaganda campaign that equates RFID microchipping with becoming superhuman, and people are begging for it.

Under the headline ‘Australians embracing super-human microchip technology’, Australia’s premier media outlet news.com.au (News Corp Australia) reports:

”It may sound like sci-fi, but hundreds of Australians are turning themselves into super-humans who can unlock doors, turn on lights and log into computers with a wave of the hand”.

Shanti Korporaal from Sydney, is at the centre of the phenomenon after having two implants inserted under her skin. Now she can get into work and her car without carrying a card or keys, and says her ultimate goal is to do away with her wallet and cards completely.

The microchips, which are the size of a grain of rice, can act like a business card, transfer contact details to smartphones and hold complex medical data.

In her interview with the Australian news outlet, Shanti claims that her friends and family are envious of her microchip lifestyle: “My nana wants one. I’ve had more opposition to my tattoos than I’ve ever had to the chip. My friends are jealous”.

In fact, the 27-year-old has noticed a business opportunity and set up a distribution service called Chip My Life with her husband, Skeeve Stevens where for just $80 to $140, people can become so called “super-humans.”

Shanti has bought into the culture that dominates her society today, dominated by the fantasy of super heroes that mesmerizes the population at theaters all across the globe.

”Ever since watching movies like the Terminator, Matrix and Minority Report I wondered if we could actually live like that. I always wondered why we all weren’t living as ‘super-humans'”.

On the same day this news story broke, Shanti appeared at Australia’s launch of the much-anticipated cyborg-themed video game Deus Ex Mankind Divided, alongside American implantable technology pioneer Amal Graafstra.

Graafstra, who became one of the world first RFID implantees back in 2005, just made headlines recently in the US with a prototype of the world’s first implant-activated smart gun and is a huge proponent for this new technology.

In an interview with the Australian media outlet, he explained that the technology he has implanted into his body has “given me the ability to communicate with machines. It’s literally integrated into who I am.”

The price for that could very well be: whose do you then become? The report goes on to warn: “…but clearly if you become part machine/computer that means there will be someone who can control that technology.

If you think the elites wouldn’t capitalize on such an exceptional opportunity to control the population you obviously don’t know history very well”.

That may sound alarmist, but it’s clear from other corroborative sources that the technologies do exist and are constantly being advanced in the name of greater privacy and security.

A recent report published in futurism.com authored by Dom Galeon points to research from the University of Washington that has developed a way to send wireless signals between a person’s hands, and they’re calling it on-body transmission.

According to the study by Vikram Iyer, Mehrdad Hessar, and computer science and engineering assistant professor Shyam Gollakota, to utilize this new method of data transfer, the user must have one hand on a screen or a touchpad, while the other hand touches a smart device, e.g. a door to their house or car.

The device’s fingerprint sensor or touchpad generates a low-frequency electromagnetic transmission that can then travel through the user’s body to the smart device they are touching with their other hand.

Through this new method, data is still transferred wirelessly, but via a more confined and secure manner. The study reports sending data at rates of 50 bps on laptop touchpads and 25 bps with fingerprint sensors, which is fast enough to send passwords within a few seconds.

Eventually, the technology could be used to transfer information to wearables or to coordinate a network of body sensors.

Besides Australia, the United States has already had its fair share of microchipped individuals. A report by Chris Stein for CBS news in the month of June highlighted some examples.

Minnesota software engineer, Tim Shank, had his dogs implanted with GPS chips in case they got lost. Now, he has a chip of his own.

”This is an NFC chip, so it’s similar to what phones have nowadays,” he told CBS News of the chip inside him. Shank had a small incision made in his finger so the tiny chip, which emits low frequencies, could be inserted inside.

He programmed the chip to open his smart lock at home and control his smartphone. “It turned off my ringer,” Shank showed off.

Maura Gillan for the dailynebraskan.com similarly noted how student Johnathan Carlson had an RFID chip implanted into his hand by a Lincoln tattoo artist. Carlson is a freshman computer and electrical engineering double major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

He said the original plan was to get a magnet implanted in his finger to detect magnetic fields, but with more research Carlson saw the practicality of getting an RFID chip. “It has unlimited applications,” he said. “It’s just a matter of where is it already been implemented and where am I willing to implement it.”

By programming the chip to hold an intricate password and installing scanners where needed, Carlson said he plans to use the chip to open websites, unlock his laptop or even open the doors of his future home.

He chose to place the implant in his left hand in the fleshy space between his pointer finger and thumb. In the future, Carlson said he’s looking to get another chip. The second would be a near-field communication chip.

”NFC chips typically can hold more information than RFID,” Carlson said. “NFC could program to hold my contact information or the entire app of Flappy Bird.”

The implantation is a very simple process. The capsule is injected via needle and doesn’t require any stitches. Carlson said he approached 15 different piercing places before piercing artist Matt Bavougian of Onyx Piercing studio agreed to do the procedure.

”The chip is classified as a piercing in the state of Nebraska,” Bavougian said. “It varies from state to state. It’s kind of like doing an earlobe.”

Bavougian said so long as the task is within legal boundaries and the client expresses general understanding of the process, he’s willing to perform the piercing.

Carlson, like many others, also bought his chip online from Amal Graafstra’s Dangerous Things, a biohacking company that specializes in implantable devices.

Unlike these body implant options, most other biometric options work externally. However, where feasible such advances tend to work together with, or alongside, other similar biometric advances that promise better security and/or enhanced privacy, at least on the surface.

Industrytoday.co.uk for example recently reported on the release of a new research report by QYResearchReports.com titled “Global Facial Recognition Biometrics Market 2016 Industry”.

The report starts by presenting the industry overview section of facial recognition biometrics, a technology utilized for the authentication and identification of individuals by photographing their facial images. It then quantifies the facial features and matches them with the templates already stored within a database.

Facial recognition biometrics technology is highly preferred over other biometric methods such as fingerprint, voice, and iris recognition. This demand is owing to its non-intrusive nature, meaning that this technology doesn’t require any kind of physical contact with an apparatus.

As per this report, the facial recognition biometrics technology is employed in a number of applications such as consumer electronics, banking and finance, defense, residential, commercial security, and government.

The rising global concerns with security owing to increasing crime rates, such as illegal immigration, terrorist attacks, and financial frauds will also fuel the growth of this market. However, it could experience a setback owing to increasing privacy issues such as misuse of personal data involved in the usage of facial recognition biometrics.

East vs. West Division Is About The Dollar – Not Nuclear War

Thea — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 13:12:14 +0000

The interesting thing about working in alternative economics is that inevitably you will become the designated buzzkill. You may be presenting the facts on the ground and the reality behind the numbers, but most of what you have to report will not be pleasant. Alternative economists are doomed to be labeled “doom and gloomers.” And that’s okay…

The truth is what it is, and sometimes it hurts people obsessed with undue positivism and bull market naivety. However, as bad as we seem to be when it comes to a negative outlook, we do not necessarily present the most ugly options on the table.

There is an undeniable trend by some within the liberty movement to assume a Mad Max-style end game to our ever expanding house of cards. That is to say, they see the only plausible outcome being apocalyptic in nature, and nuclear holocaust fits well within this viewpoint. In many cases, the argument is sometimes presented that WWIII is in the best interests of global elites seeking a catalyst for their so-called “new world order.”

This is not to say that I don’t think WWIII is a possibility; it certainly is. But I remain rather skeptical of the usefulness of nuclear war for the elites. Primarily because everything they openly claim they hope to accomplish can be accomplished without nukes.

The narrative of a coming conflict between the East and the West has been boiling steadily as the U.S. election nears its end. Even the mainstream media is insinuating the potential for shots fired. Some believe the results of the election will determine the odds of war. I hold a different position. It seems to me that the rhetoric of East vs. West and nuclear exchange is being exploited as a distraction away from a different but almost equally catastrophic end game — the death of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.

First, let’s be clear; nuclear war does little to serve elitist interests. Consider the fact that globalists have been working diligently since 9/11 to install a vast electronic surveillance infrastructure in major cities around the world. This includes a pervasive video surveillance presence, biometric data collection, facial recognition, voice fingerprinting, etc. This is not only occurring in the U.S. and Europe, but in China and Russia. Vladimir Putin signed the Orwellian “Yarovaya Package” into law in June in Russia putting into motion an electronic surveillance apparatus directly on par with any measures exploited by the NSA. Perhaps ironically, even Edward Snowden, currently living in Russia under asylum, criticized the amendments.

The point is, an elaborate and costly digital control grid is being built all around us. It makes very little sense for the elites to achieve such a level of full spectrum awareness and then flush it down the tubes in a 1.2 megaton blink of a eye. Keep in mind that a nuclear exchange also includes the targeting of military satellites — everything surveillance worthy will most likely be thoroughly toasted.

Another issue to consider is the psychological underpinnings of elitism. Elites generally exhibit psychopathy, but it is a psychopathy driven by narcissism rather than nihilism. Narcissists tend to shy away from self destruction and the destruction of the treasures they believe they are entitled to. The elites want total centralization of power and influence, and they want the masses to accept or even demand a system in which globalism becomes sacrosanct. They want the Earth, and they want it nice and pristine for themselves. They might be willing to sacrifice certain appendages of the system, but they are not intent on vaporizing the entire prize.

Given, psychopaths also do not like to lose. They do have a propensity for attempting to take others down with them if they are on the verge of failure. That said, I think the recent reports of the demise of globalism are greatly exaggerated.

The narrative of coming world war revolves around certain assumptions. For example, some liberty proponents argue that the success of the Brexit referendum, the Trump campaign and the rise of sovereignty movements are an existential threat to the globalist empire. In their minds, a nuclear war triggered by the elites at this stage makes sense because globalism does appear to be “losing.”

As I outlined in my last article Global Elites Are Getting Ready To Blame You For The Coming Financial Crash, this is simply not the case. In fact, the rise of conservative and sovereignty movements in the West sets the stage perfectly for the elites to initiate the final act of a world changing fiscal crisis. With these conservative movements in “power,” the ongoing economic collapse can then be blamed on “dangerous populists” rather than the international bankers that created the problem to begin with.

The globalists are not on the run, they are playing the Hegelian dialectic game as they always have; problem, reaction, solution.

And, as I have evidenced and outlined in great detail in numerous articles, the “conflict” between East and West is an engineered sham. At the top of the political and financial pyramids of every major nation, including Russia and China, the elites promote globalism and a one world currency under the control of the International Monetary Fund. Putin has openly supported IMF dominance of the global financial structure and the implementation of the SDR as a bridge to a global currency system. Chinese officials have done the same, and as of October, China is a major liquidity amplifier for the SDR. The BRICS bank, which was supposed to be a counterweight to the IMF and World Bank, actually works in collusion with the IMF and World Bank. The bottom line? There is no East versus West, at least not where the elites are concerned.

The Russians and the Chinese are NOT on our side. They are not even on their own side. The only legitimate opposition to the globalists is in the form of grassroots movements with very little concrete political influence. Whatever political influence we do gain tends to be quickly co-opted by deceitful measures and false leaders that ultimately serve the elites. Even the Brexit and a Trump presidency are not a real threat because they are functions of a system that the elites control in the absolute, and they would never be allowed to gain traction unless the elites needed scapegoats for a greater economic crisis.

Our fight has so far been one of disseminating information and countering propaganda; political battles have been rather fruitless. So, again, nuclear war hardly serves the interests of elites under these favorable conditions.

Nuclear war is also a very poor way of managing the darker goals of globalists. Their desire for substantial population reduction, for example, could be attained far more efficiently through economic collapse and mass starvation rather than the use of missiles and bombs. Food is a better weapon than smashed atoms ever will be. But if the false East/West paradigm is not setting the stage for nuclear war, then what is it being used for?

As I have examined in the past, the division between East and West far better serves the elites in their effort to slowly but surely unseat the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and replace it with the SDR basket — the next major step towards a single global currency system and a single global monetary authority.

Let’s be clear, the globalists are NOT pro-dollar or pro-America. They never have been. In fact the Federal Reserve has been destroying the dollar’s purchasing power since the central bank’s inception. And, by asserting the dollar as the world reserve currency, the Fed has actually placed America in a position of severe financial weakness rather than strength. Our dependency on the dollar’s world reserve status to sustain our living standards is so complete that the loss of that status will indeed crush our country. Our system cannot function without reserve status.

I’ll break it down even further; through the death of the dollar, the elites not only set in motion the chaos needed to justify total centralization and a world currency alternative, but in the process they also could remove the greatest threat to their control — those millions of American citizens still holding to conservative ideals of sovereignty and personal liberty.

The East vs. West paradigm creates a perfect rational for the end of the dollar’s reserve status. Just look at the geopolitical trends in motion.

Saudi Arabia with its vast influence over many OPEC nations is shifting away from the U.S. and building closer ties with Russia and China. The distancing of relations between the U.S. and the Saudis is even being encouraged in the U.S. through the passage of the 9/11 Saudi lawsuit bill. This will inevitably lead to the end of the dollar’s petro-status and, by extension, aid in the end of its world reserve status.

Turkey is now gravitating towards Russia and away from NATO after the very odd and most likely staged “coup” that has given Erdogan unprecedented room for dictatorship. This new relationship may even include military support from Russia.

Foreign central banks around the world, including Saudi Arabia and China, are currently liquidating their U.S. treasury holdings at record pace. The program for “de-dollarization” is already well underway.

The U.S. overall has also lost considerable goodwill among the peoples of the world (or what little goodwill it had left) in the wake of revelations that it along with allies has essentially instigated the breakdown in Syria and funded militant groups that make up the skeleton of ISIS. The continued function of our involvement in destabilizing Syria has no other benefit to the U.S. except to undermine the image of America. It does not give us increased oil dominance. It does not give us increased regional dominance. In fact, our presence in Syria only continues to harm us and bring us into dangerous proximity with Eastern interests.

There are people who do benefit from this dynamic — the globalists.

The U.S. is painted as the bumbling villain of our little story, greedy and blinded by visions of empire. The East is set up as the more rational party, the mediator trying to reason with Western madmen. For the globalists, the death of the dollar, which has been an ongoing project of theirs for decades, can now be completed, and they will receive NO blame whatsoever. History, if it is written by anyone other than liberty champions, will say that the East, not the central bankers, destroyed the dollar’s reserve status because it had to. History will say that we had it coming.

In the aftermath, the elites hope to come to the rescue as global economic instability erupts with the failure of the dollar system. As they openly admit in The Economist in 1988, the dollar must be replaced by the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights; the new world order needs a great financial reset before it can take root. But, this is a much different methodology from widespread nuclear war.

Questions arise as to November’s election and how this might affect East vs. West relations. I see no indication that it makes a difference who ends up in the White House as far as the economic result is concerned. As I have stated before, I believe Trump is the most likely candidate. Relations with the East are already in irreversible and engineered decline and even if Trump has good intentions, the globalists will pull the plug on financial support to markets not long after he enters the Oval Office. Eastern nations have been preparing for a break from the dollar for years. They work closely with the IMF. If anything, Trump’s presence will accelerate the reset.

I think the notions of nuclear war and East vs. West conflagration endure for many reasons. An extreme distaste for Barack Obama has led many liberty proponents to assume that the man will never give up his seat of power. These people do not understand that Obama is nothing more than a Muppet, a middleman with no true influence. The elites do not need him in office to continue their program.

Others assume that the mere chance of a Trump presidency is so dangerous to the elites that they would rather push the nuclear button than risk it. I think this is a bit naive. As stated in past articles, conservative movements are gaining control of a ship that is already sinking. They are being set up. A Trump win might help the elites. If the U.S. economy and currency collapses under Trump, conservative movements can be blamed. If they collapse under Clinton, the banking cabal will be blamed. It seems clear to me which option better serves elitists.

A nuclear war is also perhaps subconsciously enticing to some people. The idea that the slate could be wiped clean leaving only the prepared to come out of the smoke and ash to rebuild could in some ways be considered a preferable outcome. Compare that to liberty movements taking the blame for an economic calamity while battling against an encroaching globalist machine, sacrificing for years or possibly decades on the mere chance that we can, through force of will and ingenuity, defeat a well organized empire with an established mass surveillance network and millions of duped citizens on its side.

Hell, I’m actually an optimist when it comes to our ability to overthrow globalism, but I see no easy way out of this situation. I find it saddening that the coming fight is so frightening to people that they would rather assume a nuclear nightmare is on the way. The slower agony of economic decay and a rebellion against Big Brother may be less appetizing, but in my view, it is unavoidable.

Asgardia, first ‘nation in space,’ seeks UN recognition

Thea — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 19:30:49 +0000

Via csmonitor.com

In Norse mythology, Asgard is the realm of the gods. From the central palace of Valhalla, Odin, Thor, Loki, and the rest of the pantheon look down at the Earth and its inhabitants.

It is this image that Russian businessman and scientist Igor Ashurbeyli hoped to evoke as he laid out his plans for “Asgardia,” the first “nation in space,” in a speech in Paris on Wednesday.

Dr. Ashurbeyli hopes to secure UN recognition for Asgardia, a nation of scientific exploration free of geopolitical restrictions. The somewhat vague but lofty ideals of the project have many people asking whether such a goal is possible, and what its implications might be.

According to the project’s website, Asgardia will provide a platform to “demonstrate to scientists throughout the world that independent, private, and unrestricted research is possible” in space. The site provides users with a chance to register as a “citizen” of Asgardia.

Read entire article

Can an atheist lead a Protestant church?

Thea — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 19:33:42 +0000

Via Prophecynewswatch.com

The famously liberal United Church of Canada may have finally found the limit to its own philosophy of inclusion with atheist Reverend Gretta Vosper.

Although Rev. Vosper expressed her disbelief in the God of the Bible in a sermon as early as 2001, it was only in 2013 that she openly proclaimed herself atheist in the pulpit of the West Hill United Church.

As the church services of West Hill United have continued to change, its membership has steadily declined from 324 members in 2001 to only 147 in 2014, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

Since the West Hill congregation no longer includes Christ in their worship, many now question how Vosper and her core of supporters can remain a part of the Church, despite the United Church’s focus on inclusion.

According to the Rev. Don Schweitser, theology professor at St Andrew’s College, “It’s tough on the United Church because we’ve created this mantra of inclusiveness and now it’s been tested.

It goes against the grain to tell somebody that you have to leave.” Yet common sense tells us that any Christian church that embraces atheism in the pulpit is neither Christian nor does it have a future.

In a recent sermon, Rev. Vosper told her flock with no small measure of irony, that it is time that the Christian church abandon “the idolatry of a theistic god.”

To hear such a surreal and illogical sermon from the Rev. Vosper, who was ordained in 1993, a Christian might be excused for thinking that he has crossed over into the realm of satire.

Yet this may be the logical end of a process of extreme liberalization taking place in the Canadian United Church in which all views are accepted.

Andrea DiPede, a spokesperson for the core of supporters who remain with Rev. Vosper, told reporters that “the services are themed around love, justice, compassionate care, responsibility and living in right relationship with ourselves, with others and with the world.”

She went on to say that at West Hill the congregation “doesn’t recognize the Bible as more authoritative than other sources,” and that “some of our members publicly identify as atheists.

We rarely read the Bible in our services, and when we do, we read it alongside other sources of inspiration. We draw from many sources, including novels, journal articles, blogs, poems, nonfiction books, memoirs, videos and music in our services.”

One may wonder if neither DiPede nor Vosper have been told that they in essence now belong to a secular book club rather than a Christian Church.

The current leader of the United Church, or Moderator as he is known, the Right Reverend Jordan Cantwell, described the existential conflict now facing the liberal church as one of a tension in the Church’s basic tenants, “At the heart of the concerns being raised is a tension between two core values, both of which are central to our identity as United Church.

The first is our faith in God. The second is our commitment to being an open and inclusive church.” Perhaps this is why after two years, Rev. Vosper still occupies the pulpit and debate continues as to whether she should be defrocked.

This is not, however, the first time that liberal ideology taken to the extreme has threatened the United Church.

The previous Moderator, when asked in 1997 to describe the United Church’s core doctrine, responded by saying that “theology was difficult to pin down with prose since words of faith are words of poetry, words of heart and words of soul,” and continued by saying, “I don’t believe Jesus was God, but I’m no theologian.”

This, keep in mind, was the highest religious authority in the United Church of Canada. So such rebellion in the ranks should come as little surprise for the declining United Church whose membership has dwindled from its peak of 1,063,951 in 1964 to just 436,292 in 2014.

A sharply divided committee deciding Rev. Vosper’s fate within the church recently issued a report that stated, “In our opinion, she is not suitable to continue in ordained ministry because she does not believe in God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit.

Ms. Vosper does not recognize the primacy of scripture, she will not conduct the sacraments, and she is no longer in essential agreement with the statement of doctrine of The United Church of Canada.” Should this not be enough to remove her from her post?

Perhaps a common church member, Pamella Fell, stated the case best when she wrote on the Church’s website, “My understanding is that the United Church of Canada is a ‘Christian’ church based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Why, why, why is she still with the UCC if she isn’t a Christian?”

The average churchgoer balks in the face of such liberal illogic as an atheist minister but this is unfortunately the final stage of the far-left liberal movement in Christian churches.

There may not exist any clearer demonstration of the need for conservative beliefs than the example of the United Church that opened its doors so wide that it included not only other religions but atheism itself.

It is not certain whether Rev. Vosper will be expelled from the Church and replaced in her post, hopefully by a Christian minister, but the trend of liberalism that ends in atheism is not likely to die with her.

This is what happens what Christ is removed from Christianity.

SDR World Order

Thea — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 13:24:04 +0000

by James Corbett, corbettreport.com

I’m not sure how to break this to you, but it appears the world is ending this weekend. Or at least that’s what you’d believe if you were reading certain corners of the internet.

As you may have already heard, the UN is “taking over the internet” this weekend. But as you’ve also heard if you follow The Corbett Report, that is a complete misrepresentation of what is really happening. Worse, hyperbole about a “UN takeover” of the internet obscures the real solution to ICANN and the centralized DNS system.

But there’s another “end-of-the-world” event taking place this weekend that you might not have picked up on: the SDR.

That’s right, the IMF is formally adding the Chinese renminbi (aka the yuan) to their “Special Drawing Rights” basket on Saturday, October 1st. The move boosts the yuan to the status of global reserve currency alongside its basketmates, the pound, the euro, the yen and the dollar. At 10.92% it will be the third highest-weighted currency in the basket, behind the euro at 30.93% and the dollar at 41.73%.

For those who missed my previous reporting on the SDR and the significance of the yuan’s inclusion, here’s the primer:

The SDR is not a currency, but a potential claim on dollars, yen, euros, pounds, and now yuan.
It is issued by the IMF and held (and traded) as a “supplementary reserve asset” by central banks.
There are 204 billion SDRs outstanding, equivalent to $285 billion or about 2.5% of total global reserves.

The upshot of the SDR is that it provides liquidity for global transaction settlement in times when dollars and gold are in scarce supply. Inclusion of a currency in the SDR basket means that there is a built-in demand for that currency as central banks tend to match their currency holdings to the basket’s weighting, meaning that central bankers around the world are now (or have already) adjusted their aggregate holdings of yuan to about 10.92% of their portfolio. With $11.6 trillion of reserves globally, that equates to over $1 trillion worth of yuan being held in central bank coffers around the world.

More than that, the move is expected to boost investment in the yuan from both FX reserve managers and global portfolio managers. The FX inflows alone have been estimated at as much as $3 trillion in the coming years, with onshore bond buying accounting for a further $1 trillion of expected foreign investment.

Some outlets are hailing this as the largest transformation of the global monetary order since WWII.

Others, like Barron’s Chi Lo, are putting a wet blanket on that hyperbole. In an article titled “What Now for China as Renminbi Joins SDR?” Lo argues that much of the re-balancing of global reserve portfolios have already been completed, and would have only amounted to an extra $31 billion of demand for the yuan, a drop in the bucket of global liquidity. And global investors, he says, will not base their investment decisions on China’s SDR status, but on China’s commitment to the structural reforms which have been put on the back burner since the yuan achieved SDR status:

“SDR inclusion of the renminbi is not relevant to the portfolio re-balancing decision (to increase the weighting of renminbi-denominated assets) of international investors. The impact on global portfolio decisions will come from foreign investors’ assessment of China’s fundamental outlook, the opening of China’s capital account and the decision by international index providers, such as MSCI, to include Chinese A-shares in their global indices.”

So who’s right? Is this the dawn of a new monetary order, or a blip of little significance in and of itself? Well, in a weird way perhaps both are right. China’s SDR inclusion is not going to turn the world upside-down overnight. And if it was just the inclusion of one more currency in the global reserve basket (and only 10% of the basket at that), then this wouldn’t be significant all by itself. But while you were sleeping another development came along that gestures to the potentially transformative nature of this SDR makeover.

In August the World Bank announced to relatively little fanfare an historic bond issue: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IRBD), one of the five institutions under the World Bank umbrella, would sell nearly $3 billion worth of SDR-denominated bonds. And the currency of settlement? The Chinese yuan.

SDR-denominated bonds were flirted with decades ago, most recently in 1981, but the market for SDR bonds did not develop and they soon went the way of the dodo. But now, lo and behold, 35 years later they’re making a comeback, right in the heart of the world’s rising economic dragon.

The issue, which went ahead on August 31st, serves a mundane, practical purpose: It allows Chinese investors to dabble in different currency assets without investing abroad. But at the same time it serves a much bigger purpose. In attempting to revive the long-dormant SDR bond market, China is tacitly backing the SDR as a reserve currency unto itself. Not a mere claim that is redeemed in other currencies by central banks in need of liquidity, but a settlement currency in and of itself.

As I explained before, this has been Beijing’s plan since the 2009 crisis: not to have the yuan replace the dollar as the global reserve, but to have the SDR replace the dollar. This allows the Chinese government to avoid having to liberalize the yuan or ease up on its rigid capital controls, but still gives it a seat at the table in a new global monetary order while simultaneously dethroning their best frenemy, the US. It’s win-win-win for China and, more importantly, win-win-win for the globalist oligarchs who want to bring in a New World Order of globally-administered currency.

As The Epoch Times puts it: “This is the first step toward one world currency.”

And guess what? It’s been in the planning for years, openly discussed in the central bankers’ white papers, decision documents and conferences, but conveniently unreported by the media and completely overlooked by the public.

In March 2009, as the world was still reeling from the Global Financial Collapse, Zhou Xiaochuan, the Governor of the People’s Bank of China, published an essay on March 23, 2009 in an essay bluntly titled “Reform the international monetary system.” In it, he argued that the world could no longer afford to be tied to the US dollar and the vagaries of the American financial system. Instead, it needed to be presided over by those trustworthy angels at the IMF:

“Compared with separate management of reserves by individual countries, the centralized management of part of the global reserve by a trustworthy international institution with a reasonable return to encourage participation will be more effective in deterring speculation and stabilizing financial markets. The participating countries can also save some reserve for domestic development and economic growth. With its universal membership, its unique mandate of maintaining monetary and financial stability, and as an international ‘supervisor’ on the macroeconomic policies of its member countries, the IMF, equipped with its expertise, is endowed with a natural advantage to act as the manager of its member countries’ reserves.”

And in case that wasn’t clear enough, Zhou also wrote that: “The SDR has the features and potential to act as a super-sovereign reserve currency.”

The very next year the Bank for International Settlements (yes, that Bank for International Settlements), the European Central Bank and the World Bank jointly organized the Third Public Investors Conference, a chance for 80 central bankers, wealth fund and pension fund managers to hobnob at the BIS’ headquarters in Basel and discuss their world domination schemes. The results of that conference were collected in an edition of “BIS Papers” and published on the BIS website. One of those papers, penned by George Hoguet and Solomon Tadesse of State Street Global Advisors, discussed “The role of SDR-denominated securities in official and private portfolios” and predictably pimped the revival of SDR bonds that we are currently living through:

“An investor can synthetically replicate the weights of an SDR-denominated bond, but a security denominated in SDRs is self-rebalancing and is likely to minimize rebalancing costs. Additional research, particularly on the coordination problem (which limits liquidity) and operational issues, including settlement, can facilitate the development of an SDR-denominated bond market. Williamson (2009a) suggests that greater private use of the SDR could possibly facilitate greater official use, including the pegging of currencies to the SDR rather than to a basket of currencies or to some bilateral exchange rate.”

In other words, SDR bonds create the market for SDRs generally and legitimate their use as a settlement currency in their own right.

Now, six years later, here we are with the World Bank helping China issue SDR-denominated bonds. This is the real reason that this bond issue is happening at all. As The Epoch Times points out: “For the IBRD, there is no advantage because it is borrowing in strong currencies and getting paid in a relatively weak one.”

No, this is not about some wonderful new way for the World Bank to cheaply finance its bond issues; it is entirely about legitimizing the role of the SDR on the world stage as a potential world currency.

It remains to be seen whether this strategy will be successful. The first bond issue was a success, with a bid to cover ratio of 2.5 and 50 institutional investors—from central banks to domestic banks, brokerages and insurance companies—bidding on the instruments. But ZeroHedge quotes a fixed-income fund manager in Hong Kong who was not so impressed by the auction: “We are not interested in SDR bonds and we can’t see why Chinese investors should want these bonds since they can easily buy much higher yielding bonds in China.”

Whether SDR bonds will take off depends completely on whether the central bankers can convince the financial world of the benefits of scuttling the dollar reserve system. That will take some concerted effort, which is why we should expect to see an increase in stories raising awareness about SDRs and their potential utility in the coming years.

In that sense, the spate of stories this weekend about the yuan’s SDR inclusion may not be so much the end of the world as the first wave of propaganda getting people ready for the end of the world.

Pentagon Caught Paying PR Firm $540 Million to Make Fake Terrorist Videos

Thea — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 17:15:17 +0000

Via Activist Post

According to a new joint investigation by the Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Pentagon paid a PR firm based in the U.K. over half a billion dollars to make fake terrorist videos in Iraq as part of an enormous propaganda campaign.

PR firm Bell Pottinger fabricated short TV segments designed to imitate Arabic news networks and ?fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee,? reports the Bureau.

High-ranking U.S. military officials worked with the firm?s employees at Baghdad Camp Victory to create anti-terrorism propaganda to imitate the real thing, the Bureau claims.

Besides the Pentagon, Bell Pottinger?s list of clientele reads like the who?s who of unsavory characters ? Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet?s foundation, Margaret Thatcher, and the government of Saudi Arabia, for example.

Bell Pottinger?s former chairman, Lord Tim Bell, reportedly confirmed to the Times collaboration on a ?covert? military operation ?covered by various secrecy agencies? ? and reported to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council.

According to the report, the firm was brought to Iraq and began working shortly after the United States first invaded, under the condition it negatively portray Al Qaeda ? and then track who watched the propaganda.

Both the White House and General David Petraeus, then commander of coalition forces in Iraq, signed off on the program ? thus the president was almost certainly well aware of its existence.

?In the first media interview any Bell Pottinger employee has given about the work for the US military in Iraq, video editor Martin Wells ? who no longer works for the company ? told the Bureau his time in Camp Victory was ?shocking, eye-opening, life-changing,?? the Bureau reports.

By tracking U.S. Army contracts, records of federal procurement transactions, reports for the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, corporate records from Bell Pottinger, and more, the Bureau was able to discover the extent of the program.

One military contractor, who spoke with the outlet to explain the three types of labels given to media operations, or Ops, used in Iraq during that time, said:

White is attributed, it says who produced it on the label. Grey is unattributed and black is falsely attributed. These types of black ops, used for tracking who is watching a certain thing, were a pretty standard part of the industry toolkit.

Records revealed the operation involving the PR firm cost well over $100 million each year ? and at its height, employed more than 300 British and Iraqi staff.

All told, the Bureau ?identified transactions worth $540 million between the Pentagon and Bell Pottinger for information operations and psychological operations on a series of contracts issued from May 2007 to December 2011.?

A former Bell Pottinger employee, Martin Wells, discussed his unusual job with the Bureau in an interview, saying he had no idea what the job was about when he came on board in 2006.

?You?ll be doing new stuff that?ll be coming out of the Middle East,? the video editor was told by his agent.

?I thought ?That sounds interesting,?? Wells recalled. ?So I go along and go into this building, get escorted up to the sixth floor in a lift, come out and there?s guards up there. I thought what on earth is going on here? And it turns out it was a Navy post, basically. So from what I could work out it was a media intelligence gathering unit.?

For the ?grey ops? portion of the work, the employees crafted television commercials showing Al Qaeda negatively, and others involved making segments designed to look as if they?d been ?created by Arabic TV,? Wells noted.

Bell Pottinger film crews went on location to tape low-definition bombings by Al Qaeda, which would then be edited appropriately for believability, voiced over in Arabic, and distributed to TV stations in the region ? though the outlets weren?t always made aware of the American involvement in such segments.

Writes the Bureau:

The third and most sensitive programme described by Wells was the production of fake al Qaeda propaganda films. He told the Bureau how the videos were made. He was given precise instructions: ?We need to make this style of video and we?ve got to use al Qaeda?s footage,? he was told. ?We need it to be 10 minutes long, and it needs to be in this file format, and we need to encode it in this manner.?

US marines would take the CDs on patrol and drop them in the chaos when they raided targets. Wells said: ?If they?re raiding a house and they?re going to make a mess of it looking for stuff anyway, they?d just drop an odd CD there.?

Those CDs were made to play using Real Player, which connects to the Internet to operate, and, as Wells told the Bureau, ?the team embedded a code into the CDs which linked to a Google Analytics account, giving a list of IP addresses where the CDs had been played.?

Only three people had access to who was tracked in this way, he explained ? himself, a U.S. military commander, and a senior manager at the PR firm.

Bell Pottinger did work for the DoD under the Information Operations Task Force, the Pentagon confirmed for the investigation, but insisted the information it distributed was ?truthful.?

However, an unnamed and thus unverified U.S. defense official confirmed Wells? account that Bell Pottinger also performed work under the Joint Psychological Operations Task Force (JPOTF) ? bringing to mind similarities to Operation Mockingbird.

Wells explained to the Bureau, ?We?d get the two colonels in to look at the things we?d done that day, they?d be fine with it, it would then go to General Petraeus. If [Petraeus] couldn?t sign off on it, it would go on up the line to the White House, and it was signed off up there, and the answer would come back down the line.?

Clearly, the military would have interest in shifting the regional narrative in its favor ? but continued government hijacking of the media seems at best highly questionable, and at worst, detrimental to the very idea of a free press.

Bell Pottinger cut ties with the U.S. military propaganda operation in 2011, when the unit it worked with left Iraq.