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WND
ARE MYSTERY 'TRUMPET BLASTS' IN SKY FROM GOD?
No one has solid explanation for sounds heard since 2008
Published: May 18, 2015
JOE KOVACS
In the final book of the New Testament known as the Book of Revelation, angels are shown to be sounding trumpets, accompanied by a variety of supernatural plagues upon Planet Earth.
And now, mysterious, unexplained sounds in the sky that some are likening to trumpet blasts are puzzling people all over the world, including the United States.
As Britain’s Daily Mail reports, “Sounding like a trumpet or a collective from a brass section of an orchestra, a selection of videos shot from the Canada to Ukraine, via the U.S., Germany and Belarus show strange goings on above us.”
Numerous videos are posted on YouTube from spots all over the world, with people wondering just what is causing the strange phenomenon.
See video and hear the mysterious sound for yourself:
The first time the sky sounds were posted on YouTube was back in 2008, as a resident of Homel, Belarus, made a recording.
Later that year, another anonymous user posted “ear-deafening” sounds they claimed “were not a hoax” echoing through a quiet neighborhood believed to be in America.
In June 2013, Kimberly Wookey of Terrace, British Columbia, Canada, first caught the sound, and has continued her recordings through May 7 of this year.
Wookey said on YouTube: “On the morning of August 29, 2013 at approximately 7:30am I was awoken by these sounds.
“I shot out of bed realizing it was the same sounds I had heard before and I ran looking for a camera to try to capture them with. I came out into the living room to find my seven-year-old son awake and scared wondering what was going on. He had said the noises woke him up as well and shook his window.
“I managed to record three clips showing almost five minutes of these strange sounds. After it was over and I sat down at the computer to upload the video. After checking my Facebook I noticed a lot of locals had heard the same sounds again but this time it was far more widespread.
‘I have no idea what these sounds are but it is pretty strange and I am glad that I was able to catch them this time and share what I heard. The sounds were heard again on Sept 8th at 6:30am so far we have confirmed reports of it being heard from town to the lake, 25km away.”
Wookey is skeptical the sounds are caused by anything unearthly.
“I personally do not believe this has any religious connection, nor do I believe it is aliens, graders, trains, construction, etc.,” she noted. “I do believe it could be a geophysical phenomenon.”
The sound was also captured in Kiev, Ukraine, in August 2011 with one eyewitness saying, “The sound was extremely loud, with some people 30-40km from the recording also hearing it in other cities. It was in the news with the investigation with specialists and scientists, but there is still no exact explanation.”
Some who have heard the phenomenon have reportedly experienced severe nightmares for days afterward.
Aaron Traylor of Montana is among them, who said after recording the sound on February 18, 2012:
I’ve had vivid nightmares ever since I posted the very eerie strange sounds that has Missoula talking and looking towards the sky; awful, awful nightmares.
My wife woke me from a dream last night where she says I was screaming like she’s never heard me scream before.
I was taking my daughter out for her daily exercise along with my dog. I started to hear the sounds early on in our little adventure and the first time it was heard my dog perked her ears up and my daughter stopped in her tracks.
That sound was identical to the one I had taped later, and lasted just as long. Now since I’ve been following this worldwide strange sounds phenomenon for some time, the whole “End of the world” thing popped instantly into my head.
What if this was one of those sounds? I had my phone ready to capture the next one just in case. Sure enough, five minutes later the sound had returned.
Traylor doesn’t think the noise has anything to do with modes of transportation, such as trains or planes.
“The Missoula rail system is one very loud and unpredictable beast. Trains connecting their loads to another is a sound very familiar to locals. Loud bangs and screeches can be heard from nearly 10 miles away at any given point throughout the day,” he said.
“Still, that doesn’t explain the fan-like whirring sound that can be heard at the start of the recording. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for nearly four years and have heard all kinds of planes coming and going overhead and on the runway. I’ve never heard a plane sound like this before.
“My neighborhood is very quiet and we were about three blocks away from any busy intersection during the incident. Can’t say I’ve ever heard an automobile of any kind with that kind of noise.”
In 2012, several people in a parking lot in Allen, Texas, heard the sounds, with one commenting: “It’s weird, I’ve never heard anything like that.”
At the University of Oklahoma, geoscientist David Deming has been writing about a phenomenon called “the Hum” – “a mysterious and untraceable sound that is heard in certain locations around the world by two to ten percent of the population.”
Deming wrote in the Journal of Scientific Exploration that possible sources of the Hum might be telephone transmissions and “aircraft operated by the U.S. Navy for the purpose of submarine communications.”
NASA has said Planet Earth has “natural radio emissions,” explaining: “If humans had radio antennas instead of ears, we would hear a remarkable symphony of strange noises coming from our own planet. Scientists call them ‘tweeks,’ ‘whistlers’ and ‘sferics.’
“They sound like background music from a flamboyant science-fiction film, but this is not science fiction. Earth’s natural radio emissions are real and, although we’re mostly unaware of them, they are around us all the time.”
Some other theories being discussed include:
The sounding of a shofar (ram’s horn), the grinding of the Earth’s tectonic plates, atmospheric pressure, construction work, space aliens, secret sky weaponry such as the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, and, of course, the activities of angels.
Throughout the Book of Revelation, the apostle John, who was writing Aegean Sea island of Patmos, described the voices of angels as sounding like trumpets.
“After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.” (Revelation 4:1)
The eighth chapter of Revelation notes seven angels having seven trumpets to sound, and when they do, catastrophic events unfold, including a scorching of a third of all green-plant life on Earth, a third of the sea becoming blood and swarms of locusts given the power of scorpions.
The apostle Paul described the resurrection of dead believers in Jesus to occur at the “last” trumpet blast.
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)
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BreakPoint.org
The new totalitarians: Change your religious beliefs or else
May 11, 2015
In the first century, Jesus was asked whether the Jewish people, who were under pagan, Roman occupation, should pay taxes to Caesar. The Lord, of course, said we are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s. But in 21st century America, Caesar is angling for a better deal—and he’s getting it.
Our old friend Chuck Colson sounded the alarm several years ago when certain political figures on the Left—including former secretary of state Hillary Clinton—began downsizing the First Amendment’s guarantee of our God-given right to freedom of religion into a more manageable “freedom of worship.”
Chuck feared—rightly, it turns out—that opponents of religious liberty were seeking to keep religion within the four walls of our churches, synagogues, and mosques—as if religious belief were no more than a purely private opinion with no practical implications for the real world. In other words, “Feel free to worship, if you like, but keep your religiously informed opinions and actions to yourself.”
It’s a totalitarian impulse, and you can see it in the intensifying efforts to force faith groups to pay for abortions, to shut down Christian businesses that don’t want to participate in so-called “gay weddings,” and so on.
And the totalitarians are getting bolder about it. In Victoria, Australia, doctors are required by law to perform abortions when asked, or refer the patient to a colleague who will. In Canada, meanwhile, the Ontario and Saskatchewan Colleges of Doctors and Surgeons want physicians forced to perform euthanasia—which is now a fundamental national “right”—if no one else is available to do it.
And the totalitarians—being totalitarians—will brook no compromise. According to Canadian bioethicist Udo Schuklenk, “The very idea that we ought to countenance conscientious objection in any profession is objectionable.”
Really? And alas, this totalitarian streak is not confined to the Great White North. Mrs. Clinton, who once said that abortion can be “a sad, even tragic choice,” now asserts that a so-called “right to reproductive health care” trumps religious freedom. “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will,” she said at a recent meeting of the Women in the World Summit. “And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” Religious beliefs have to be changed?
Now Caesar seeks to regulate not just our actions, but our thoughts as well!
New York Times columnist and gay-rights advocate Frank Bruni thinks we need to change our religious beliefs about marriage, too—since, he says, interpreting the Bible is filled with subjectivity and uncertainty. Therefore believers shouldn’t take it too literally on matters of sexuality. “So our debate about religious freedom,” Bruni says, “should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”
How nice that Mr. Bruni and other sexual totalitarians stand ready to “free us” from our prejudices. What’s next, re-education camps? If you think I’m exaggerating the totalitarian threat, in the same newspaper, David Brooks writes, “If orthodox Christians are suddenly written out of polite society as modern-day Bull Connors, this would only halt progress, polarize the debate and lead to a bloody war of all against all.”
Lord have mercy.
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CHRISTAIN HEADLINES
The Eclipse of Religious Liberty and the Threat of a New Dark Age
Al Mohler | President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary | Monday, May 18, 2015
THE ECLIPSE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND THE THREAT OF A NEW DARK AGE
Remarks Delivered Friday, May 15, 2015:
Mister Attorney General, Mr. Sears, and distinguished guests, it is a great honor to accept the Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty. That honor is greatly magnified by the presence of Attorney General Meese and by the fact that this award bears his name. He is one of America’s most courageous defenders of human freedom and the American experiment in ordered liberty.
I am also honored to receive this award from the Alliance Defending Freedom and its President, Alan Sears. I have known Alan for many years, and I know him to be one of the most powerful advocates of virtue and liberty of our age. The work of the Alliance Defending Freedom is essential, singular, and urgently vital. This battalion of defenders fights most of all—and most effectively—for our “first freedom,” religious liberty.
I am deeply, and always aware that I could not be here without the constant support and love of my wife, Mary Mohler.
You will recognize that I borrowed from Sir Winston Churchill for the title of my remarks. In the first volume of his history of World War II, the great statesman looked back at the storm clouds that gathered in the 1930s, when he had bravely warned of a war that would determine the destiny of human dignity and liberty for untold millions of people.
We are not facing the same gathering storm, but we are now facing a battle that will determine the destiny of priceless freedoms and the very foundation of human rights and human dignity.
Speaking thirty years ago, Attorney General Meese warned that “there are ideas which have gained influence in some parts of our society, particularly in some important and sophisticated areas that are opposed to religious freedom and freedom in general. In some areas there are some people that have espoused a hostility to religion that must be recognized for what it is, and expressly countered.”
Those were prophetic words, prescient in their clarity and foresight. The ideas of which Mr. Meese warned have only gained ground in the last thirty years, and now with astounding velocity. A revolution in morality now seeks not only to subvert marriage, but also to redefine it, and thus to undermine an essential foundation of human dignity, flourishing, and freedom.
Religious liberty is under direct threat. Just days ago the Solicitor General of the United States served notice before the Supreme Court that the liberties of religious institutions will be an open and unavoidable question. Already, religious liberty is threatened by a new moral regime that exalts erotic liberty and personal autonomy and openly argues that religious liberties must give way to the new morality, its redefinition of marriage, and its demand for coercive moral, cultural, and legal sovereignty.
A new moral and legal order is ascendant in America, and this new order is only possible, in the arena of American law and jurisprudence, if the original intent and the very words of the Constitution of the United States are twisted beyond recognition.
These are days that will require courage, conviction, and clarity of vision. We are in a fight for the most basic liberties God has given humanity, every single one of us, made in his image. Religious liberty is being redefined as mere freedom of worship, but it will not long survive if it is reduced to a private sphere with no public voice. The very freedom to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ is at stake, and thus so is the liberty of every American. Human rights and human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator. The eclipse of Christian truth will lead inevitably to a tragic loss of human dignity. If we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one. I am a Christian, and I believe that salvation is found in no other name than Jesus Christ and in no other gospel, but I will fight for the religious liberty of all.
There is a gathering storm, and its threat is urgent and real, but there are arguments to be made, principles to be defended, rights to be respected, truths to be cherished, and permanent things to be preserved. We face the danger of a new Dark Age marked by the loss of liberty and the denial of human dignity. Thus, there is a battle to be joined and much work to be done. Together, may we be found faithful to these tasks. As Churchill would remind us, in every gathering storm there is a summons to action.
Remarks by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, upon receiving the 2015 Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Friday, May 15, 2015 in McLean, Virginia.
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WND
HOW SUPREMES COULD CRIPPLE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
'Just teaching kids that homosexuality is a sin would be sufficient' to trigger probe
Published: May 17, 2005
GREG COROMBOS
If the Supreme Court finds there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage next month, the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit groups that refuse to embrace the movement could soon be on the chopping block.
Writing in a column for USA Today, Home School Legal Defense Association Chairman Michael Farris said religious and even non-religious nonprofit institutions will likely be targeted by the government for holding to traditional standards on sex, marriage and morality.
“All of these entities are exempt from taxation under the same section of the IRS code. And even though churches can be exempt without application, their exemption can nonetheless be revoked,” Farris wrote. “Even if it takes the IRS years to begin the enforcement proceedings against such institutions, we can expect other fallout from this decision to begin shortly after the release of the Supreme Court’s opinion.”
The premise for this concern is rooted in a widely reported exchange during the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on marriage held on April 28.
“In the Bob Jones case, the court held that a college was not entitled to tax-exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same-sex marriage?” asked Justice Samuel Alito.
“It’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that,” responded U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
In a subsequent interview, Farris said the scrutiny would stretch much wider than just colleges and universities.
“The legal principle that was established in the interracial case from Bob Jones University is applicable to all nonprofit organizations, not just colleges,” said Farris, who is also chancellor at Patrick Henry College, which accepts no federal funds.
He can easily envision a scenario where the federal government would investigate the school.
“We would not hire any professor that believed in that form of marriage or practiced it,” he said. “If we stay true to our beliefs, we’re going to find our tax-exempt status threatened in the days ahead. That is a death knell for a lot of organizations.”
And it’s not just colleges and universities. Farris said any religious nonprofit group is at risk, and Christian and private elementary schools, middle schools and high schools would find themselves in the IRS cross-hairs.
Churches would be at risk of losing tax-exempt status as well.
Farris said a simple scenario for a Christian school getting in trouble would be for a legally “married” same-sex couple to attempt enrolling their child at the school. Many schools have parents sign a commitment to abide by the statement of faith, which may include language about marriage only being between a man and a woman. If the school denies enrollment to a student on those grounds, he said an investigation could easily follow.
But even if there are no issues with personnel or the families trying to get children into the schools, the curriculum could also trigger a tax-exempt status review.
“Just teaching our kids that homosexuality is a sin would be sufficient to bring these things into question,” Farris said.
In fact, he said a growing list of liberal activist academics don’t just want schools that teach biblical morality to lose their tax-exempt status but to be shuttered completely.
“Professors at Northwestern University, professors at George Washington University and at Emory have all opined that Christian schools and homeschools that refuse to teach their kids a tolerant viewpoint should be closed down entirely, not just lose their tax-exempt status,” Farris said. “They should lose the right to be able to teach children.”
Many churches require membership based on a statement of faith, and their affiliated schools require parents to acknowledge that students will be taught according to those principles. Historically, those voluntary associations have provided strong legal defenses.
“I was in a courtroom in the late 1970s where an Orthodox Presbyterian Church was being sued for refusing to continue the employment of the church organist they found out was homosexual,” Farris said. “In that day, the church won on the basis of religious freedom.”
But he said those days are quickly ending.
“Unfortunately, the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1990 in a case called Employment Division v. Smith, threw the free exercise of religion onto the constitutional trash heap. So I would expect that case goes the other way (now),” said Farris, who argued this will worm its way into every major decision churches make.
“You can take it down as close to the heart of the church as you want: who you hire as your pastor, who you hire as your minister of music, who you hire as your youth director,” he said.
Just how big of a hit would nonprofits take if they lost their tax-exempt status? Tax payments would not look much different, but donors would lose their tax benefits, and that includes private foundations required by their charters to give to IRS-approved nonprofits. For many organizations, Farris said, the status loss would be a matter of life and death.
“It would really hurt on the giving side of things,” he said. “Unless there was an army of people who would rise up and say, ‘I don’t care about the taxes. I want to give to you anyway,’ schools like Patrick Henry would end up having to close down.”
If the Supreme Court does legalize “gay marriage” coast to coast, Farris said there is a short-term way to preserve these nonprofit institutions and a couple of long-term avenues as well.
First, he said Congress needs to look out for the viability of religious nonprofits.
“Congress could pass explicit laws that would refuse to give this kind of implication to the internal revenue tax code. That’s going to take majorities in both houses of Congress, and it’s going to take a friendly president to sign the law. So elections will matter,” said Farris, who still has his eyes on the ultimate goal.
Farris said, “The biggest solution, from my perspective, is to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service and get rid of the whole income-tax system and the ability of the government to regulate our lives through that.”
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THE JOPLIN GLOBE
Rich Brown: Lifted Bible ban has effort booking it to Cuba
After lifting of ban, effort under wayto get more Bibles in Communist nation
Posted: Saturday, May 16, 2015 7:00 am
The Bible, long considered to be the best-selling book of all time, has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies. It has had a major influence on literature and history, and yet there are some places where it still has been circulated little, if any.
Take Cuba, for instance. This Communist nation has barred Bible distribution openly since 1969, until recently.
The country is conducting an experimental program that can be halted at any time if the distribution creates too many problems or too much negative feedback, said David Isais, who works with the Bible Commission of Cuba and is the contact person for the Revival Fires Ministry in Branson West and formerly in Joplin. Revival Fires has completed four deliveries of more than 265,000 Bibles to Cuba and continues to seek donations to meet the request for 1 million.
Cecil Todd, founder and president of Revival Fires, is no stranger to providing Bibles to the far reaches of the world.Todd, an Ozark Christian College graduate, oversaw the distribution of over 2 million Bibles to the former Soviet Union and more than 250,000 to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In more recent times, Revival Fires provided 6,000 Bibles to men and women on two U.S. aircraft carriers supporting airstrikes in Syria off the coast of Iraq and 3,000 more to the 101st Airborne Division deployed to Africa to help contain Ebola.
Todd was recently honored for the Revival Fires Bible donations to the military in a ceremony at the Pentagon.
The Bible Commission of Cuba, which has served as a liaison between the government and churches in Cuba for more than six decades, is seeking Bibles not only for churches but also for schools, prisons and libraries.
Todd said the Cuban willingness to allow such Bible circulation boggles his mind. He said that prior to the change in policy, his youngest son, Cecil Wayne, was almost arrested on all 10 of his mission trips to Cuba, during which Bibles had to be smuggled to the longtime Communist nation.
Todd said he has learned that more than 1,200 Cuban churches are urgently seeking Bibles. Some churches have only one or two Bibles for their entire congregations, and many Cuban preachers have had to borrow a Bible to study and preach.
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CNN
Benjamin Netanyahu: Jerusalem will remain united city
By Oren Liebermann, CNN
Updated 0202 GMT (0902 HKT) May 18, 2015
Story highlights
Benjamin Netanyahu promised Jerusalem would stay a united city under Israeli authority
Netanyahu's remarks were made on Jerusalem Day, a controversial holiday in the city
Jews and Palestinians mark this Jerusalem Day with demonstrations and clashes
Jerusalem (CNN)In his first speech since swearing in a new government, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that Jerusalem would stay a united city under Israeli authority. His statements come on Jerusalem Day, a controversial holiday marked by demonstrations and clashes around the Old City.
"Forty-eight years ago, the division of Jerusalem was ended and we returned to be united," said Netanyahu, referring to the Six-Day War of 1967 that brought all of Jerusalem under Israel's control. "Its division led to dishevelment. Its unification led to its growth. Jerusalem will not return to be a wounded city. We will keep Jerusalem united under Israeli authority."
A contentious holiday
Israelis and Palestinians view Jerusalem Day very differently. For Israelis, the holiday marks the unification of Jerusalem, while Palestinians see it as the Israeli takeover of East Jerusalem. Many see the division of Jerusalem as central to a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
But Netanyahu, who said before the March 17 elections that there would be no Palestinian state under his premiership before walking back those comments, said Jerusalem will stay one city. He said it has always been the capital of the Jewish people.
"This is our home, and we will remain here. At the same time, we will make sure that Jerusalem is an open city. Only under the governance of Israel has the right to worship for all religions been kept. The believers can pray at the places they want, not because we are ruling the city, but because we are here," Netanyahu said in a ceremony at Ammunition Hill, the site of a fierce battle during the Six-Day War. From 1948 to 1967, Jews could not access the Western Wall, considered the holiest site in the world for Jews.
Clashes mark Jerusalem day
In the hours before Netanyahu's speech, raucous demonstrations and clashes marked Jerusalem Day, as thousands of nationalist Jews marched through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City waving Israeli flags. Nearby, Palestinian protestors waved Palestinian flags as hundreds of police officers tried to maintain order during the flag parade. Israel police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says four police officers were slightly injured and six Palestinians were arrested for throwing stones and attacking police.
In recent years, the nationalist flag parade has been marred by racist slogans and "Death to Arabs" chants. This year, the Supreme Court allowed the parade to march through the Muslim Quarter, but insisted that police arrest anyone who incites racism or violence against Arabs.
Netanyahu criticizes Iran nuclear deal
In recent months, many of Netanyahu's speeches have focused on the threat of a nuclear Iran. Although that was not the primary intent of the Jerusalem Day speech, Netanyahu did mention Iran once, saying it is not too late to back out of a bad nuclear deal.
"Last night, after the strong action of the United States against the terror of ISIS, the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, attacked the U.S.," said Netanyahu, adding that Khamenei called the United States an "initiator and supporter of terror."
"These things were said when Iran never had a nuclear weapon, and it is still not too late to go back on the program to give Iran a package that will pave the way to atomic weapons," he continued. "We are against the package, and we are not the only ones."
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ARUTZ SHEVA
Op-Ed: The Vatican Against the Jews
The Vatican’s decision should be read as an historic stance against the rights of the Jewish people to their own land.
Published: Thursday, May 14, 2015 3:02 AM
Giulio Meotti
The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly...
It is since 2012 that the Vatican, under Pope Benedict XVI, spoke of the “State of Palestine” in its official documents. So the decision of the Holy See to recognize this non-existent state should not be a surprise. But the treaty is the first legal and bilateral document in which the Vatican speaks of the “State of Palestine” and no more of the “Organization for the Liberation of Palestine” (PLO): it is, in fact, an official recognition. A symbolic and historic breakthrough.
When the Vatican recognized Israel, at the beginning of the Nineties, it happened within the framework of Oslo Accords: Israel fatally recognized the PLO and the Catholic Church in exchange recognized the decades-old Jewish State. A big mistake, but many mistakes occurred in that period.
Today the situation is much different: the Palestinian Arabs are internationalizing the conflict with Israel and avoiding sitting at the same table with her, while the Arab-Islamic world feeds an enormous hatred for the “Zionists” and masses of Christians are driven out of Islamic lands, including the Palestinian Authority areas. The Vatican’s decision should be read as an historic stance against the rights of the Jewish people to their own land.
For over forty years after the Jewish State won independence in 1948, the Vatican adopted a diplomatic policy copying that of Israel’s enemies: total non-recognition of the Jewish statehood. Despite the acceptance by all Western nations, including, at the beginning, the
Communist bloc, the Vatican’s recognition of Israel occurred only in 1993.
The same Church that didn’t recognize Israel opened diplomatic relations with the PLO, a terror organization whose goal is the “liberation” of the Holy Land from the Jews who live between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. The Church formally recognized Israel’s existence only two decades after Israel’s foe, Egypt, signed a peace treaty with the Jewish State.
And the Vatican had diplomatic relations with over 130 states. It acknowledged their legitimacy even as it disputed, in some cases, their borders.
Why has such a different standard been applied to Israel? Because of anti-Semitism and the aversion they felt upon seeing Israel again among the family of nations. For the Vatican, an independent Jewish State bearing the name “Israel,” with Jerusalem as its capital, and a renewal of life in the land of the Bible, has been the most complex theological Christian problem and a total contradiction to Church dogma.
And now, because of the same anti-Semitism, the Vatican has hurried to recognize the “State of Palestine”, this Trojan horse against the Jewish people, a tool to dismantle the State of Israel and a proto-Nazi entity from which all the Jews are to be cleansed.
We note in shock Pope Francis’ eagerness to recognize the “State of Palestine” before it has even yet arisen and we recall the eagerness of another Pope to recognize the Nazi regime just four months after it was established.
They are both declarations of moral war against the Jewish people.
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THE INDEPENDENT
Canada's plan to make boycotting Israel a 'hate crime' is stupid and counterproductive
The new law would put Jews and civil society groups on trial for anti-Semitism
ROBERT FISK
Sunday 17 May 2015
I’ve never been keen on boycotts. The one against Italy for invading Abyssinia didn’t work. Nor did the arms blockade on Spain. I’m still not sure that boycotting South Africa really brought down apartheid. I rather suspect that the old racists simply realised they were hopelessly outnumbered by the blacks of South Africa and that the game was up.
And I’m still unconvinced that boycotting Israel, even though it frightens the right-wing crazies in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, will achieve a two-state solution, human rights for Palestinians, etc. I’m free to refuse to buy products from Jewish colonies in occupied Arab land (I do not buy them), but, when I visit Israel, I stay at the King David Hotel in west Jerusalem, visit the Tel Aviv gallery of art and buy Israeli-published books. Some Israeli academics support a boycott of their own country. They may be right in doing so.
But in Canada – and I had to literally rub my eyes when I read this – the totally pro-Israeli Conservative government of Stephen Harper intends to list the boycotting of Israel as a “hate crime”. This is not only ludicrous, stupid, pointless and racist because it assumes that anyone opposed to Israel’s vicious and iniquitous policies of land-grabbing in the West Bank is an anti-Semite, but it is also anti-democratic. Those who believe in non-violence have always espoused boycott movements on the grounds that economic pressure rather than bombs is a moral way of putting pressure on a country that violates international law.
Yet Harper, who would surely be elected to the Knesset if he were an Israeli, went so far as to suggest on a recent visit to Jerusalem that merely to criticise Israel can be a form of anti-Semitism. The newly retired Canadian Foreign minister John Baird (normally a fairly sane guy) has described Canada’s Boycott Israel movement as “the new face of anti-Semitism”. In January, he actually signed an official agreement with Israel to fight the Boycott Israel organisation, known locally as the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) group. Steven Blaney, who rejoices in the title of Canada’s “Minister of Public Safety”, says that boycotts of Israel cannot be separated from anti-Semitic hate speech and the recent attacks against Jews in France.
This is preposterous. If I decline to buy Israeli-produced oranges at a British supermarket, this doesn’t make me a Nazi murderer. To criticise Israel doesn’t turn Canadians into Jew-haters. A number of liberal Jewish groups have protested against Harper’s proposed new law – far too many Jewish organisations have praised it – on the grounds that it assumes that all Jews support Israel or approve of its actions. And since Jews are also members of boycott-Israel groups, Harper’s Comic Cuts new law would have to put Jews on trial in Canada for anti-Semitism.
Cloaked as usual in the kind of Blairite (and Cameronite) clichés that all law-and-order politicians adopt, Canadians are told that their government will show “zero tolerance” towards groups advocating a boycott of Israel. Of course, we show “zero tolerance” on the streets towards theft, mugging and gangland thuggery. But “zero tolerance” against those who wish to boycott a nation whose army slaughtered more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza last year, more than half of them civilians? Really? It was significant, I thought, that, after the killing of a Canadian soldier outside the Ottawa parliament by a Muslim last year and a murderous attack on Canadian servicemen, Harper publicised the message of condolence he had received from Netanyahu, as if the commiserations of a man who ordered the bombardment of Gaza were something to be proud of.
The dark little catch in all this is that last year Canada changed its definition of hate speech to include statements made against “national origin”, not just race and religion. Thus statements or speeches critical of Israel – like a number of public lectures I have given in Canada – may now be classed as statements against Jews (even though Jews are often among the organisers of my own speaking engagements in America). And, in due course, editorials in papers such as the Toronto Star can be deemed anti-Semitic and thus worthy of being denounced as a “hate-crime”.
If Canada’s parliament is dumb enough to pass this new law, it will put a lot of civil society groups under the cosh. The United Church of Canada and Canadian Quakers could find themselves in court and judges, however much they personally recoiled from Israel’s abuse of Palestinians, would have to abide by this outrageous piece of legislation and exercise “zero tolerance” against the free speech of those who condemn war crimes by Israel in the Middle East.
It is worth remembering that tens of thousands of Jews throughout the world, and especially in America and Poland, called for a boycott of Nazi Germany in 1933 for the very anti-Semitic acts that led directly to the Holocaust. American diplomats were critical, lest it provoked Hitler to even crueller deeds. But they didn’t threaten the protesters with “zero tolerance” of “hate crimes” because of the “national origin” of the Germans they proposed to boycott.
In the end, of course, it’s quite simple. Boycotting a state for its crimes is a non-violent but potentially powerful way to express moral outrage at a time when political statements – or cowardly governments like that of Stephen Harper – fail to represent the anger of voters or have any effect on a state that ignores international law. If you take that away, then the Boston bomber, now facing the execution chamber, can say that his was the only way.
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MOTHERBOARD
The Technology Transhumanists Want in Their Kids
Written by
ZOLTAN ISTVAN
May 18, 2015 // 07:00 AM EST
Image: David Lytle/Flickr
Technology seems to be disrupting nearly every aspect of our lives. However, with the exception of toddlers thumbing their way through smartphone apps and watching Sesame Street on YouTube, raising children isn't significantly different than it was 20 years ago.
I would bet my right arm, though, that such gradual change won't be the case in another 20 years. The transhumanist age of child rearing is dawning. I discovered this last year when a pediatrician checked my 24-hour-old infant's hearing with a soundless brainwave headset. Just three years before, in the same hospital with my first child, infant hearing tests were being done using the decade's old beeping device that you physically stick in the ear and wait for the munchkin to react.
In general, when adults see new technology available to themselves, they are often more curious than skeptical. But when they think of new tech for their children, parents can become downright defensive. Curiosity no longer prevails, and protection mechanisms kick in strongly. Despite this, society is on a path to embrace an ever increasing amount of bizarre tech to be used in the raising of its children—including some things literally inside children.
I'm excited by the technology and am looking into getting this type of implant for my four-year-old daughter
In fact, the 20-year outlook is so radical, that it seems science fiction-like. For example, NBC forecast that many Americans will get "chipped" by the year 2017. Right now, the majority of implanted chips people have are for restoring hearing, and in some cases treating mental disease, such as epilepsy. But biohackers are increasingly implanting RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips into themselves. Even X Prize Chairman and Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis did this on stage recently during a speech.
I'm excited by the technology and am looking into getting this type of implant for my four-year-old daughter. As a US presidential candidate who is sometimes threatened on Twitter and other social media, I want more control on the whereabouts of my child. The new RFID chips are tiny and harmless, but they can be tracked on a smartphone.
Of course, they will be also be useful for when my daughter gets older and tries to play hooky from school. This might sound excessively controlling, but expect millions of parents to think this same way—especially those who sign on to some of the strict Tiger Mom philosophy for their children. In fact, in the future, I think the biggest celebration of one's teens will not be birthdays or graduations, but when parents give their kids the right to turn off the tracking chip they have inside themselves—or have it removed entirely.
Of course, by then, no one will remove implants. This is because the new generation of implants (which are being developed and will be here in the next few years) will be for much more than just tracking. They will be medical wonders that people will use to get daily updates via their smartphones about their bodies, including heart rate, temperature, and hydration.
Already today, though, there is some child rearing transhumanist technology that is being used. For parents, the first year of life for their child is often the toughest, filled with hourly challenges to make sure the baby doesn't kill itself accidentally. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is the greatest fear, a general term for when an infant dies in its first year of life.
About 2000 kids die from SIDS in the US every year. But new wearable technology is already helping to fight that. A sock called Owlet worn by an infant collects heart rate, oxygen, and sleep data—and then sends it to a smartphone or the cloud for other devices to access. TempTraq, a flexible patch that is stuck on one's child monitors the temperature of an infant—again sending updates to your smartphone. The patch debuted this year in the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Also at CES 2015, Intel debuted a car seat clip that lets parents know if they've accidentally left their child in the car, something that happens far more than you might think in America.
And of course, so-called smart diapers, some made by popular Huggies, are already used. In them, a sensor lets you know when your child is wet and needs changing. One company Pixie Scientific, that successfully closed an Indiegogo campaign, is working on a diaper and smart phone app let you know about whether one's child is having a urinary tract infection, prolonged dehydration, and even kidney problems.
Some technologies completely remove danger from children entirely. What parent hasn't worried about their kid getting in a car with a drunk at the wheel? MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is one of America's most popular nonprofits, and has been a major influence in keeping people away from the wheel when inebriated.
But MADD may not be around much longer. Driverless cars will save the lives of tens of thousands of kids and adults every year the more prevalent they become on the road. In fact, it's more than likely my children will never learn to drive. They won't need to. Cars will be automated completely.
But just how far will technology go to changing child rearing? Currently, the conflict between home, public, and private schooling is a half-century old debate. Which is better and which will give your child the largest advantage later in its life? The debate is becoming even more complicated with online learning, where people can, for example, take MIT courses from their computers and get the world's best educations. Furthermore, virtual reality will make it even more complex as one will be able to participate in each of the three education environments.
Yet, it's another debate that could be obsolete in 20 years. Brainwave headsets or more advanced cranial implant technology could literally be the death of education. Using mind uploading tech, people in the future may be able to download educations and skills directly into their minds and memories.
Sound impossible? It's not. Already, last year telepathy was accomplished between two people across an ocean. Billions of dollars are being poured in the EGG, or mind wave reading and stimulating technology. Eventually, we'll find just the right tech and algorithms that enable us to download education directly into the learning parts of our brains. Then playing that Mozart's 5th Symphony won't take 10 years to learn, but 10 seconds to sync and start playing. Imagine how much time we we might save? Sure, our kids won't have much discipline or a love of learning new things, but they'll sure know French grammar (and Chinese, Russian, and Arabic perfectly too).
Of course, no conversation on transhumanism and children would be complete without talking of designer babies. Last month, Chinese scientists broke ground with CRISPR technology of editing and modifying the DNA of embryos. The fact is their experiment literally has helped usher in the age of designer babies, something society has long known it was going to enter. In just years, we might posses the ability to edit in higher intelligences to our offspring—and edit out hereditary diseases. Of course, we'll also be able to choose any eye, hair, and skin color, as well as other traits we might want in our children.
So, is all this transhumanist child rearing tech fair to those who can't afford it?
The controversy with this technology is two-fold. Will conservative or religious people let us remake the human being into a more functional version of itself? And will all people be able to afford it? Editing a genome isn't going to be cheap, at first. Neither will driverless cars. Furthermore, I surmise the Ivy League undergrad education download is also going to be costly (although, it’ll probably still be much cheaper than a physical education). So, is all this transhumanist child rearing tech fair to those who can't afford it?
The short answer is: Of course, not. But neither are the costs of AIDS treatments in the world today. Hundreds of thousands still die because they can't afford the proper technology and medicine. And it's a fact that wealthier people live far longer, fuller lives than poor people—about 25 percent more on average.
So what can we do to even the playing field? To begin with, let's not stop the technology. Instead, let's work on stopping the inequality and create programs that entitle all children to better health and child rearing innovation. As a society, let's come up with ways that make it so all peoples can benefit from the transhumanist tech that is changing our world and changing the way our children will be raised.
Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, author of The Transhumanist Wager, and founder of and presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party. He writes an occasional column for Motherboard in which he ruminates on the future beyond natural human ability.
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The New York Times
Has US Conceded to Putin with Kerry Visit?
That’s certainly how the Russians saw it - as admission that Russia is too important and too strong not to talk to
David M. Herszenhorn (The New York Times) May 21, 2015
For Russia, victory came three days after Victory Day, in the form of Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit this week to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. It was widely interpreted here as a signal of surrender by the Americans — an olive branch from President Obama, and an acknowledgment that Russia and its leader are simply too important to ignore.
Since the seizure of Crimea more than a year ago, Mr. Obama has worked aggressively to isolate Russia and its renegade president, Vladimir V. Putin, portraying him as a lawless bully atop an economically failing, increasingly irrelevant petrostate.
Mr. Obama led the charge by the West to punish Mr. Putin for his intervention in Ukraine, booting Russia from the Group of 8 economic powers, imposing harsh sanctions on some of Mr. Putin’s closest confidants and delivering financial and military assistance to the new Ukrainian government.
In recent months, however, Russia has not only weathered those attacks and levied painful countersanctions on America’s European allies, but has also proved stubbornly important on the world stage. That has been true especially in regard to Syria, where its proposal to confiscate chemical weapons has kept President Bashar al-Assad, a Kremlin ally, in power, and in the negotiations that secured a tentative deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
Mr. Putin, who over 15 years as Russia’s paramount leader has consistently confounded his adversaries, be they foreign or domestic, once again seems to be emerging on top — if not as an outright winner in his most recent confrontation with the West, then certainly as a national hero, unbowed, firmly in control, and having surrendered nothing, especially not Crimea, his most coveted prize.
“Putin is looking pretty smart right now,” said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute, a Washington research group focused on Russia and the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Rojansky cautioned that Mr. Putin’s seemingly strengthened position could prove illusory. The economy is in recession and remains dangerously reliant on energy sources, and most analysts say the long-term outlook for oil and gas prices is bleak.
Although Mr. Putin may look smart at the moment, Mr. Rojansky said, none of this was necessarily by design, adding, “It doesn’t necessarily teach us anything fundamentally about him or how his system works.”
Nevertheless, with oil prices seeming at least to have stabilized after a modest recovery, and the ruble rebounding so strongly from a late autumn collapse that the Russian Central Bank has begun buying dollars to keep it from appreciating further, the Western economic sanctions seem to have fallen short.
Meanwhile, a cease-fire is mostly holding in eastern Ukraine, limiting casualties and vastly increasing pressure on President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, who so far has been unable to deliver the increased autonomy for the pro-Russian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that was called for in the truce agreement brokered by France and Germany.
The subtle shift by the Obama administration reflects a pragmatic recognition that the policy of isolating Russia, economically and diplomatically, is failing, analysts say.
“Americans realized that sanctions against Russia did not quite work,” Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada, a research organization that is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with Svobodnaya Pressa, a news site here.
“They thought Russia had become so much a part of the world market and depended on it so much that it would be enough to frighten Moscow a little to make it surrender,” Mr. Kremenyuk said. “In reality, it’s all different. Russia not only withstood sanctions but even introduced countersanctions and demonstrated that it is not going to turn off this road.”
He added: “The U.S. cannot simply capitulate. This is why the policy change begins with statements like, ‘We shall think,’ ‘We shall assess the situation.’ In fact, this is a cautious departure from the policy of sanctions.”
To be sure, the United States position on Ukraine has not shifted, and Mr. Kerry said at a news conference in Sochi that he had “made clear our deep concerns” including about Russia’s “continued arming, training, command and control of separatist forces.” The administration portrayed the visit as intended to explore new avenues of collaboration, especially in Syria, and Mr. Kerry in his remarks again insisted that Russia and Ukraine fulfill the terms of the cease-fire accord signed in Minsk, Belarus.
For the Russian news media and political pundits, however, it was striking that Mr. Kerry’s arrival came three days after Moscow’s huge celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany — an event that the United States refused to attend and had urged other nations to shun as well.
That snub was regarded by ordinary Russians, even those with little interest in global affairs, as disrespectful of Soviet war veterans and the millions killed in action. Mr. Kerry laid a wreath at a World War II memorial in Sochi, in a gesture interpreted as an attempt to make some amends for skipping the Moscow events.
While the Kremlin has hardly been gloating in recent days, it has noted firmly that the subject of Crimea was not discussed at the meeting, and some Russians officials have expressed a sense of victory.
Some officials in Ukraine and in Europe said they believed the Obama administration’s outreach to Russia reflected a rising concern in Washington that the European Union would not be willing to renew the economic sanctions against Russia when they expire in July.
European nations have far more trade and other economic dealings with Russia than the United States does and so they have borne the brunt of the countersanctions barring imports of European goods, including most agricultural products. Some countries like Greece have publicly voiced disagreement with the sanctions policy in recent weeks.
Mr. Kremenyuk and other analysts, however, said they believed the major motivation of the United States was to seek Russia’s assistance on other more pressing problems.
“There are some issues in which Americans cannot make progress without Russia,” Mr. Kremenyuk told Svobodnaya Pressa. “For instance, Iran and the Iranian nuclear program. Or Syria, where nothing can be done without us. Of course, they will not yell: ‘Help us!’ No way. But within the last couple of years Americans found some areas in the Middle East where they cannot do much, but Russia can.”
Alexander G. Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research group, said that based on a recent visit to Washington he believed that Middle East issues were more important to the Americans than Ukraine.
“It’s clear that Obama is thinking about his legacy, his place in history,” Mr. Baunov said in an interview. “Not to achieve the final deal with Iran will be a big defeat for him, so he needs Russia for this.”
Mr. Baunov said that ultimately Ukraine mattered more to Russia. “Russia is ready to sacrifice more for Ukraine than the West and the United States,” he said. “It is willing to sacrifice more economically and in lives than the West. Obama realizes Americans won’t do the same.”
Mr. Baunov said that the Kremlin was probably relieved at the easing of tensions. “Beyond all this anti-Western rhetoric, the Russian leadership and Putin himself are not very comfortable being isolated,” he said, noting that the crisis in Ukraine was rooted partly in longstanding grievances in Moscow over Russia’s interests and values not being respected in the West.
“The main motivation of Russia’s behavior is that they are not treated as equal,” he said.
For Mr. Putin, however, success is measured in simple terms, Mr. Rojansky said. “Ukraine is a really a regime survival story for Putin at home,” he added. “He is still alive. He is still in control. He is still in power. He has survived.”
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Natural News
Wave of medical police state refugees to flee California if SB 277 signed into law... Gov. Brown to declare war on children... no child safe
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) California will be the origin of America's first wave of medical police state refugees fleeing medical tyranny if Gov. Jerry Brown signs SB 277 into law.
SB 277 is California's pharma-funded vaccine assault on all parents and children. It would eliminate all personal belief exemptions and force nearly all children in California to be forcibly injected with vaccines that are knowingly manufactured with neurotoxic substances such as mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and MSG.
If he signs the law, Gov. Brown will be declaring medical genocide against children whose genetic makeup causes them to have extremely heightened risks to vaccine injury. No child will be safe in California, and the state will cement its position as the first real-life medical police state in America, where risks of a medical civil war skyrocket.
Natural News has heard from dozens of readers who tell us they are making preparations to flee the state if SB 277 is signed into law. Mandatory vaccines at gunpoint are "the last straw," according to one mom who wrote Natural News about her concerns. "All these state senators voting for the bill received campaign donations from the drug companies. They sold us out to the corporate interests. There's nothing else we can do but leave..."
Other parents are looking at pulling their children out of public schools (government-run indoctrination centers) and home schooling them instead. This effort, of course, has enormous economic consequences for a family, so not all parents can structure their child's education around home schooling.
California, where "green living" became government-run medical tyranny
California has historically been home to parents who sought a green-living, natural lifestyle that was relatively free from toxic chemicals. If SB 277 is signed into law, the California government would force potentially deadly chemicals onto all the children across the state, betraying the core principles of medical choice, medical ethics and compassion for children.
Green living, in other words, would be replaced by medical tyranny. And if the state decides it can force one medical intervention on parents and their children, then it will of course ratchet that up to any number of dangerous medical interventions it wants to force upon the population. Remember: a state that doesn't respect a woman's choice about medical interventions is a medical police state.
Vaccines provably cause brain damage and death in many children. Just recently, the UK government agreed to pay out $90 million in financial compensation to families of children who were brain damaged by the swine flu vaccine. Similarly, the secretive U.S. Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out nearly $3 billion in compensation for children who were provably harmed or killed by vaccine injury side effects in the United States.
The CDC scientist Dr. William Thompson went public in 2014 with proof that the CDC committed scientific fraud to cover up links between vaccines and autism in African-American children. The entire lamestream media blackballed the story in a massive, coordinated conspiracy to silence the truth and promote the financial interests of their corporate sponsors.
It has since been learned that the CDC is not a branch of the federal government but a private corporation operating in total violation of U.S. law. The CDC even trains and deploys intelligence operatives like Nurse Hickox to spread false propaganda about infectious disease.
The creation of a nationwide, false flag epidemic medical police state
Many intelligent observers now believe the CDC is the key architect behind a nationwide push for an epidemic-driven medical police state. "Epidemics" are the perfect Orwellian enemy that never goes away, and as long as the CDC can fake the hysteria surrounding epidemics -- its claim that the flu kills 35,000 people a year is pure fiction -- it can seize control of the country's public health domain.
The CDC's pushing of false disease hysteria goes all the way back to the discovery of AIDS, after which the CDC went berserk, claiming that even straight married men were going to be overrun by the epidemic. Congress responded with billions in new funding, and the CDC learned an important lesson: the more hysteria it can create around infectious disease, the more powerful it becomes.
The contrived Disneyland measles outbreak was another example of how the CDC masterminded mass hysteria to push a medical police state agenda. In reality, the measles "outbreak" was extremely small and no one died. Yet the CDC uses the hysteria to push for mandatory vaccines that will kill, maim or injure thousands of children each year in California alone. The "treatment" is worse than the disease! But the hysteria and fear mongering are necessary to maintain total dictatorial control in the medical police state.
What we really have in America today is what journalist Jon Rappoport called "Totalitarian science." This is government-run pseudoscience enforced at gunpoint. Alongside the government gunpoint enforcement, you also have total censorship of all scientific questions about vaccines, total media censorship of any dialog or discussion about vaccine injury, and really what can only be called "runaway vaccine injury denialism" among the entire medical establishment, whose harmful actions against children really do parallel the Nazi Holocaust in terms of its pharma origins and utter abandonment of medical ethics.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, an unapologetic Big Government statist, is playing right into the hands of the CDC and the medical police state with SB 277. If he signs it into law, he will be reinforcing the effectiveness of staged "pandemic paranoia" schemes while enslaving tens of millions of people in a medical police state structure from which the CDC and the vaccine industry can demand UNLIMITED vaccinations at any time, for any contrived reason.
Even more shockingly, such vaccinations can be demanded and required no matter what toxic chemicals the vaccines contain. There is no exemption against vaccines made with mercury, for example. There's no exemption against vaccines formulated with formaldehyde, another potent neurotoxin. SB 277 would make California the first state in America which forces its own people to be neurologically poisoned with medical injections.
That's probably why so many people who wish to protect their own neurological function are deciding to flee the state. It's the simple principle of "cognitive self-defense." If you want to have a healthy brain, you have to leave California entirely.
The hilarious upshot of all this, of course, is that the only people left behind will be those with damaged brains who continue to vote for more corrupt bureaucrats to keep poisoning them. Welcome to Collapsifornia, where the inmates are truly running the asylum.
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Until next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions
“They band themselves together against the life of the righteous And condemn the innocent to death.”
(Psalm 94:21)