UK AND US ANNOUNCE JOINT ANTI-TERROR PLANS

Sky News
January 16, 2015

David Cameron and Barack Obama have announced joint plans to fight the global threat of Islamist extremism following the deadly attacks in France.

Speaking after two-day talks at the White House, Britain’s Prime Minister said the US and UK are united in their drive to fight “poisonous and fanatical ideology”.

The announcement comes amid fears about the spread of terrorism after last week’s Paris attacks that left 17 people dead and the arrest of more than two dozen people in anti-terror raids in Belgium, Germany and France.
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets with British Prime Minister David Cameron (L) at the Oval Office

Mr Cameron said a joint US-UK group will examine additional ways to identify and counter extremist threats in both countries.

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Coming to your Bible

Battle Cry
Jan/Feb 15 Edition

A recent article in Christianity Today is headlined : "Pop Francis: Why Everyone Loves the Pope."
It lauds Francis' "unscripted" style "committed to breaking down the often bitter rivalry between evangelicals and Catholics." It mentions his recent apology to Italian Evangelicals for the Catholic religion's participation in persecution of Pentecostals prior to World War II.

Note this statement from the article: "At the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church adopted a much more biblical approach, transforming its worship and fundamentally changing its relation to modern secular culture."

How does a PR campaign and an updated system of rituals make it more biblical? To be more biblical, purgatory would have to go, along with the worship of the wafer god and virgin goddess, works of salvation, and the pope's claim that tradition and Magisterium are equal to or supersede Scripture.

Even after all these changes, we would have to ask, which Bible? Author David W. Daniels points out in his book, Why They Changed the Bible, how all modern Bibles are increasingly slanted to support Rome's pagan dogmas. An entire section is devoted to the scheme to include the Apocrypha in the Bible. He describes how the Bible Societies were, from the beginning, infiltrated with Jesuits or Vatican sympathizers. Bible societies agreed not only to change text wording to favor unbiblical Catholic teaching, but to add in the Apocrypha whenever requested. Bible translators all over the world are subject to a 1960s agreement with the Vatican to add the Apocrypha to any translation if the Catholic groups ask for it. The history and tragic results of this are detailed in Why They Changed the Bible.

Seminaries all over the world are starting to require their students to get bibles complete with something called the "Deuterocanonicals." this is another word for what we know as the Apocrypha. It is also a deceptive word. It makes the reader think these fairytales, superstitions and occultism are actually a "secondary canon" on a level just below scripture - "scripture lite." The truth is that they have raised men's words to the level of [G-d's] words and have lowered [G-d's] words to the level of man's.

The Vatican desperately needs the Apocrypha in the Bible. When they cannot distort a Bible passage to fit one of their pagan doctrines, they resort to the Apocrypha. For example, their teaching of purgatory is based on the Apocryphal books of 2 Maccabees 12:45 and Tobit 12:9. Using money to pay for sins appears in Ecclesiasticus 3:30 "Water will quench a flaming fire; and alms maketh atonement for sins."

The Apocrypha also contains such strange advice as using smoked fish liver to dispel demons (Tobit 6), and suggest that suicide, in some cases is manly and noble (2 Maccabees 14:37-46). Strange historical inaccuracies also appear, such as the death records of Antiochus Epiphanes, who must have died twice when you compare 2 Maccabees 2:13-16 to 9:1-29. A search of Christianbook.com turns up 46 items for sale related to the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha, with over two dozen Bibles that include them. Supposedly these are only for Roman Catholics, but Daniel's research discovered that the groundwork has been laid over the decades within the Bible Societies to ultimately produce a Bible with the Apocrypha and subtle watering-down to one world Bible for one world religion. The Jesuit pope's PR campaign continues to sugar coat the bait in the trap for Evangelicals who have already swallowed the poison of the modern (Catholic) versions.

Exodus of Jews From France Is Accelerating

The New American
January 16, 2015

On Sunday, January 11, just two days after the attacks in Paris, hundreds of French Jews attended an information fair to learn how to emigrate to Israel. Calling it an “Aliyah” fair — a Hebrew term to describe the “going up” to Jerusalem — the Jewish Agency for Israel has told its staff to prepare for an onslaught of those Jewish French citizens who have finally decided, thanks to the shootings by separate radical Islamist groups on Friday, to get out of town while the getting is still good.

Two years ago some 3,400 Jews emigrated from France, while last year that number doubled to over 7,000. It is estimated that at least another 10,000 will leave in 2015, with some observers predicting that France’s total population of 500,000 Jews will shrink by 100,000 over the next several years.

The attacks on Jews, coupled with the government’s closing of Jewish shops in their neighborhood following those attacks, along with the enforced shuttering of the Grand Synagogue of Paris (the first time since World War II), is leading many to make the decision to exit the country.

Attacks have accelerated greatly just over the last year, and are now being brought to light. As Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, the director of the Paris branch of the American Jewish Committee, exclaimed:

Hatred of Jews never ends.... Radical Islamists have struck violently, from the murders at a Jewish school in Toulouse two years ago, to repeated incidents of violence against Jews and synagogues in Paris, to the vicious rape of a Jewish woman in her own home, and today’s assault on a kosher supermarket in the middle of Paris.

Just a partial listing of such directed attacks against French Jews must include at least the following:

January 26, 2014: Protestors shouting “Jew, France is not yours!” at a street demonstration in Paris

March 2, 2014: A Jewish man is beaten while traveling on the Paris Metro by assailants who shouted during the assault, “Jew, we are going to lay into you! You have no country!”

March 20, 2014: A Jewish teacher is attacked leaving a kosher restaurant in Paris. After breaking his nose, his attackers drew a swastika on his chest.

May 15, 2014: A Jewish women was attacked while waiting for a bus in Paris’ Montmartre district by a man who violently shook her baby’s carriage and shouted at her: “Dirty Jewess! Enough with your children already! You Jews have too many children!”

June 9, 2014: Two Jewish teenagers walking with their grandfather to their synagogue in a suburb of Paris are attacked by four ax-wielding terrorists.

September 2, 2014: Two French teenage girls are arrested for planning to blow up a synagogue in Lyon. Intelligence sources said they were “part of a network of young Islamists.”

November 12, 2014: There were two separate attacks on Jews this day: a kosher restaurant is firebombed while a Jewish student was assaulted outside his high school.

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Price of Meat ,Poultry, Fish, and Eggs Goes Higher

CNS News
January 16, 2015

(CNSNews.com) -- Despite a decline in the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) in December, the food index increased and the price index for meats, poultry, fish and eggs hit a record high, according to data released todayfrom the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

A basket of grocery goods. (AP)

According to the BLS, “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) declined 0.4 percent in December on a seasonally adjusted basis. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 0.8 percent before seasonal adjustment.”

“The gasoline index continued to fall sharply, declining 9.4 percent and leading to the decrease in the seasonally adjusted all items index,” said the BLS.

“The fuel oil index also fell sharply, and the energy index posted its largest one-month decline since December 2008, although the indexes for natural gas and for electricity both increased,” said the BLS.

“The food index, in contrast, rose 0.3 percent, its largest increase since September.”

(AP Photo)

“The food index rose 0.3 percent in December after a 0.2 percent increase in November,” stated the BLS. “The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increased 0.3 percent as the index for beef and veal continued to rise, advancing 0.7 percent.”

In addition to rising 0.3 percent over the month, the index for meats, poultry, fish and eggs also hit a record high in December.

In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1. As of last December 2013, it was 239.151. In November 2014 it hit 260.247. And in December 2014 it hit a record high of 261.002, an increase of 9.1 percent in one year.

The price of ground beef, which hit a record high in November of $4.201, declined in December to $4.156.

While the price of beef declined, the price of fresh whole chicken per pound increased 0.5 percent, and grade A eggs hit a record high price.

(AP Photo)

In January 1980, when the BLS started tracking the price of this commodity, Grade A eggs cost $0.879 per pound. By this December 2014, Grade A eggs cost $2.21 per pound. A decade ago, in December 2004, Grade A eggs cost $1.199 a pound. Since then, the price has increased 84.3%.

Each month, the BLS employs data collectors to visit thousands of retail stores all over the United States to obtain information on the prices of thousands of items to measure changes for the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI is simply the average change over time in prices paid by consumers for a market basket of goods and services.

The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.

HOW MIDDLE EASTERN GOVERNMENTS ARE BUYING OFF THE U.S. POLITICAL PROCESS

Zero Hedge
January 14, 2015

Image Credits: 92278137@N04 / Flickr

The quaint notion that the U.S. political system remotely resembles either a Republic or a Democracy should have been abandoned long ago.

Any lingering illusions were surely extinguished last year, when an academic study empirically proved that the USA is nothing more than a corrupt oligarchy. I highlighted this groundbreaking piece of research in the post: New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy. Here’s an excerpt from the study itself:

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

While having super rich and powerful American oligarchs running the show is one thing, the reality of the situation is actually far worse. Thanks to a recent article in Vice, we now know that foreign governments are aggressively employing their extraordinary wealth to advance their interests here on American soil. In many cases, these are autocratic regimes, which not only do not care about the best interests of the nation, they are often caught actively funding ISIS and even perpetuating 9/11 itself. Here are some excerpts from the piece:

For ex-congressman and GOP strategist Vin Weber, Christmas came a few days early and from an unlikely source: the Qatari government. In December, three days before the holiday, the former Minnesota lawmaker and his lobbying firm, Mercury LLC, signed a lucrative lobbying contract with theGulf State,receiving a $465,000 advance for the first few months of work.

Weber isn’t alone. Over the past year and a half, regimes throughout the Middle East, from Turkey to the United Arab Emirates, have gone on what appears to be a shopping spree for former members of Congress. Compared to the rest of the world, Middle East governments have accounted for more than fifty percent of the latest revolving door hires for former lawmakers during this time period, according to a review of disclosures by VICE.

What’s also striking about the latest surge in foreign lobbying is that many of these former lawmakers maintain influence that extends well beyond the halls of Congress. Former Michigan Representative Pete Hoekstra, who used to chair the House Intelligence Committee, appears regularly in the media to demand that the US increase its arms assistance to the Kurds in northern Iraq. Writing for the conservative news outlet National Review, Hoekstra argued that, “the United States needs to immediately provide [the Peshmerga] with more than light arms and artillery to tip the scales in their favor and overcome the firepower of the Islamists.” In that instance and in others, Hoekstra has often not disclosed that since August 12th, he has worked as a paid representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which relies on the beleaguered Peshmerga militia for safety against ISIS.

The same goes for former US Senator Norm Coleman, a lobbyist who serves on the board of the influential Republican Jewish Coalition, and whose Super PAC, American Action Network, spent over $12.3 million to help elect Republicans last year. Since July, Coleman has been a registered lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hired in part to work on sanctions against Iran, a key priority of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family. Shortly after signing up as a lobbyist for the Saudis, Coleman, introduced only as a former Senator, gave a speech on Capitol Hill imploring his congressional allies to realize that Israel and Saudi Arabia have many shared policy priorities, and that the United States “should be hand in glove with our allies in the region.” And in a Twitter message greeting the new Congress last week, Coleman wrote that a “nuclear Iran” is the biggest threat and linked to an article calling for Congress to prioritize a new round of Iran sanctions.

It’s not always clear what these lawmaker-lobbyists say or do on behalf of their foreign supervisors, but what is clear is that many of these politicians are willing to renege on their past commitments to human rights. Delahunt, for example, led inquiries in Congress to cast a light into the brutal abuses of Azerbaijan. If anything, Azerbaijan has gotten worse, according to international observers, who note that since last year, the country has gone on an unprecedented crackdown of activists, journalists, and other perceived opponents of the regime. But instead of pushing back against such crimes, Delahunt now works to put a positive spin on the developments.

The influx of foreign influence into Washington is a growing phenomenon. As the New York Times reported late last year, major think tanks, including the Brookings Institute and the Atlantic Council, have allowed foreign donors to call the shots on their policy prescriptions. Major trade groups that can now play an unlimited role in influencing elections, thanks to the Citizens United ruling, receive direct funds from corporations headquartered in foreign lands. The American Petroleum Institute, for instance, is run by a board of directors that includes an executive from ARAMCO, the Saudi state-owned oil company that takes its orders from the Saudi ruling family. 

Remember that next time you read a report from a “think tank,” or hear one of their “expert” analysts on some mainstream media propaganda show. You’ll probably hear as much truth from them as you received from Fox News’ recently shamed “terrorism expert,” Steve Emerson.

It appears that this trend of former powerful politicians getting revolving door payouts via shady, human rights abusing regimes represents the wave of the future. After all, why attract all that publicity by joining JP Morgan, when you can just as easily start your own consulting or lobbying firm and earn millions from the likes of say, Kazakhstan. This is precisely what former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has done. Recall: Letter Reveals Tony Blair Advised Kazakhstan’s President on How to Spin Massacre of Innocent, Unarmed Protesters.

Even more troubling, is the fact that several of the governments mentioned in the Vice piece, specifically Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were instrumental in funding the emergence of ISIS, the latest existential terrorist threat du jour. Remember the post, America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq, in which it was noted that:

But in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime.

So these individuals are funding ISIS with one hand, and feeding former U.S. politicians with the other. It’s basically oligarchy on steroids. And it’s not just ISIS either. Bear in mind the increasingly clear connection between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks highlighted in the piece: Two Congressmen Push for Release of 28-Page Document Showing Saudi Involvement in 9/11.

Are we simply being played as fools by a bunch of authoritarian desert monarchs? Certainly appears that way.