Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Saved or Lost?
May 30th, 2016
CommentaryArt Sadlier
Categories: Bible Salvation

Saved and Lost?

Can a believer lose his or her salvation? That is a question that troubles a lot of Christians, the answer can give great peace and stability to a true child of God.

We need to understand that the word of God teaches that God alone can provide salvation. Man has no part to play in his salvation, it is all of God. Only a Divine human Savior could go to the cross and pay the price of sin and only God by His Spirit could apply that salvation to an individual. The scripture says that we are saved by grace through faith. Grace is God providing salvation; faith moves the hand of God to provide it.  Salvation is the gift of God,
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Once the gift has been received only the giver can take it away and He has promised never to do that. “For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.” (Psalm 37:28).  "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38, 39).

God has promised that salvation is forever and He cannot lie or break His promise,  “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24).  

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47). How long is everlasting life? You can't have everlasting life for a few years and then lose it. Once you have salvation you have it is forever.

“And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40).  Once a man believes the outcome rests entirely on God and His promise.

We need to understand also what happens at the moment of salvation. Peter said that when a person is saved he or she becomes a partaker of the divine nature. “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4).  

We actually become a partaker of the very nature of God, we are born again. Paul said we become new creatures in Christ. John said that our new nature cannot sin. “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.” (1 John 5:18).

We know that the old nature is ever present until we are glorified, yet we have a divine nature that cannot sin. This new nature, a divine nature that cannot sin, could not turn away from the Lord, it can never go back, it could never reject what it has already received, it can never be lost. If a true believer were to be cast into hell God would be cast into hell with him.  “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).  

Other verses that give assurance of a salvation that can never be lost, John 10:26-29; Matthew 24:35; Romans 8:16.

We need to understand that many people think they are saved and they are not. False profession is a major problem in this issue. We see this in Matthew 13:20-22, we see the gospel being spread as a farmer sows the seed some respond and make a profession of faith and they look good for a while but time proves that they never had the root of the matter, they had never been saved, Verse 6, "they had no root".

We see this also revealed in Matthew 7:21-23, notice they were self-deceived into believing that they were saved and they were not. It's not that they had been saved and lost their salvation, Jesus said to them, "I never knew you", they were deceived into thinking they were believers but they were never saved.

That is the curse of New Evangelicalism that plagues the Evangelical church today. They preach easy-believism, you don't need to repent, you don't need to change. Look at us we are so much like the world you can hardly tell the difference. Just name the name of Jesus and you are in.

The end result is a disaster, the disaster of Matthew 7:21-23, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

  A church full of pseudo believers is a catastrophe. Jesus said, "....except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3, 5).

Paul said, "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith...." (2 Cor. 13:5).

We need not be in doubt, 1 John 5:13 "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may KNOW that ye have eternal life...."

It's not saved and lost, it's lost because they were never really saved in the first place.  “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity”  (2 Timothy 2:19).

MARKS OF A GENUINE CHRISTIAN

These things do not help you to obtain salvation (with the exception of numbers 1 & 2) but are the evidence that salvation has taken place.

1 - A true understanding of who Christ is and what He has done.

2 - Recognition of our sin and rebellion against God which is accompanied by repentance and faith in Christ as your savior.

3 - Obedience to the words and commands of Christ which is accompanied by a hunger to know God's word. 

1 John 2:3-4    John 3:24   John 14:21   Jeremiah 15:16

4 - Love for our brothers in Christ.  I John 2:9-11   1 John 3:14   john 13:35

5 - Fellowship with other Christians.   1 John 1:3   Hebrews 10; 25   Acts 2:42-47

6 - Prayer -  a genuine relationship with Christ will involve communication with Him.  John 15:7   John 16:24

7 - Witnessing - a readiness to witness to others as to what Christ has done for you.  Mark 16:15    Acts 1:8

8 - Baptism - baptism by immersion is not an option for a true believer. Though it has no part in salvation, it is a command of Christ.  Matthew 28:19    Acts 2:37-38

These are the eight marks of true salvation, if your faith in Christ is genuine saving faith, these marks will be found in your life in the coming days.  2 Corinthians 5:17.

Art Sadlier

Obama Refugees and Surging Deadly Diseases in America
May 30th, 2016
CommentaryFront Page Mag.
Categories: Contemporary Issues

The lethal violation of the nation's most basic public health protocols

An outbreak of deadly infectious tuberculosis among refugees President Obama sent to Indiana is a frightening reminder that the administration's dangerous immigration policies are putting American lives at risk.

In a frenzied rush to bring as many non-English-speaking Third World aliens to the country as possible before his presidency ends in a few months, Obama is allowing Syrian war migrants and refugees to be brought into the country without first undergoing proper medical examinations, a violation of the nation's most basic public health protocols.

“Tuberculosis is one of the most lethal infectious diseases in history,” said Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and surgeons. “It is easily transmitted, say on a public bus [and] increasingly, it is becoming highly resistant to all our antibiotics,” she said.

It is clear that Obama doesn't care about the health and well-being of the American people. That was obvious when he began pushing to create the so-called death panels that Obamacare mandates. But now as a result of the president's recklessness, fatal diseases are surfacing or making a comeback in the U.S. Among those ailments are pneumonia, paralysis-causing acute flaccid myelitis, dengue fever, swine flu, and enterovirus D68.

Under Obama, immigration policy aims to import new Democratic voters -- the less skilled, less educated, less enamored with the norms and values of Western civilization, the better. Lackluster border security, risible efforts at immigration law enforcement, mass amnesties, promises of generous taxpayer-financed welfare benefits, and other goodies, are used by Obama to expand and remake the American electorate.

Prior to the Obama era, tuberculosis was a rare diagnosis and many thought the disease had more or less been eradicated in the United States. Multi-drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis have been reported in populous California, Florida, Texas, and New York, all of which have large concentrations of illegal aliens.

Breitbart News reports that the four individuals in the Hoosier State with active tuberculosis (TB) were sent there by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in 2015. The origin countries of the quartet were not publicly available at time of writing but they're not the only refugees in that state with tuberculosis. Just 77 percent of the 1,885 refugees the feds sent to Indiana last year completed the post-arrival medical screenings that identified the four persons with active TB. No medical data is available for the remaining 420 who were not screened. Of the 1,885 refugees, 80 percent came Myanmar.

Last year close to 400 migrants with latent TB arrived in Indiana, according to state health authorities. Indiana's TB rate had been falling in the five decades up to 2010, but it is now rising as more migrants move to the state.

While latent TB itself is not infectious, 10 percent of those with latent TB later develop active infectious TB, a particularly nasty ancient disease.

"Tuberculosis (TB) ... bacteria usually attack the lungs," according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), "[b]ut TB bacteria can attack any part of the body, such as the kidney, spine, and brain." 

The primer on the malady that used to be called the White Plague continues:

"If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal. ... TB is spread through the air from one person to another. The bacteria are put into the air when a person with active TB disease of the lungs or throat coughs, sneezes, speaks, or sings. People nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected. ... In the early 1900s, TB disease killed one out of every seven people living in the United States and Europe. ... 

"[R]acial and ethnic minority populations and foreign-born individuals continue to account for a large number of TB cases in the United States. This is why the initial screening for TB and the appropriate treatment of TB for individuals coming to the United States and living here permanently is an important tool to help eradicate the disease in the United States and worldwide."

The Obama administration doesn't even follow its own advice on screening because resettling refugees is more important to the Obama administration than protecting people who are already here in the country.

Dr. Orient blasted the Obama administration for letting refugees in without testing for latent TB.

“Admitting people who might cause an epidemic makes no sense whatsoever from a public health standpoint,” Orient said. “It suggests that those who favor it do not care about the cost in suffering, death, and expense to Americans.” 

“If for humanitarian reasons we wish to help people fleeing persecution, there is still no need to release them into the general population of susceptible individuals," she explained. "Officials who place politics above the health of Americans need to be held accountable and removed from positions of authority."

And the Zika virus from Latin America, which causes microcephaly, i.e. severe fetal brain defects, has immigrated to the United States under President Obama's watch. Cases have been found in 11 states and in the District of Columbia.

"People from Central and South America, ground zero for Zika and other infectious diseases including tuberculosis, dengue, Chagas, Chikungunya and schistosomiasis, make up nearly 15 percent of the illegal-immigrant population in the U.S.," notes Michelle Malkin.

The ongoing invasion at the border with Mexico is exposing Americans to numerous health risks.

"What's coming over into the U.S. could harm everyone," said Southern Texas Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrera. "We are starting to see scabies, chicken pox, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections, and different viruses."

Syrian refugees have brought leishmaniasis, a terrifying parasitic flesh-eating disease prevalent in Syria, to Turkey and Lebanon. In the 18th century a British physician called the illness the "Aleppo boil and Aleppo evil." U.S. immigration screenings would likely miss the difficult-to-treat disease which spreads to humans through sandflies because its victims can be asymptomatic for a long time.

It is important to bear in mind that contrary to what left-wingers say, it is not nutty or racist to be concerned about foreigners importing diseases; population movement is how diseases spread. 

Aliens and even some citizens may unwittingly bring in pathogens for which Americans have not developed immunity. Sometimes these maladies cause death on an epic scale. For example, centuries ago Europeans brought pathogens like the smallpox virus on their bodies to the new world. Indigenous Indian communities were wiped out because they had never encountered it before. 

Fortunately, not everyone in Washington, D.C. has been asleep at the wheel on public health issues.

Two public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) sounded the alarm last year about the Obama administration's appalling disregard for the safety of Americans.

In an email exchange between Logistics Management Specialist George Roark and Public Health Advisor William Adams, Roark wrote that “no country in the world would allow” Obama's massive influx of unwanted foreigners. 

Adams answers in the correspondence released under the Freedom of Information Act that “in ten years or less, they’ll all be voting ... Commander’s intent ... ” Roark characterizes Obama as “the worst pres[ident] we have ever had ... he truly is ‘the amateur’ but a Marxist too.”

The year before CDC Intelligence Analyst Daniel Bubacz mockingly referred to Obama's border policy as a “Leave No Child on the other Side of the Border Policy.” 

So far no one in the Obama White House is listening.

Let the Headlines Speak
May 30th, 2016
Daily NewsFrom the Internet - R.R. News
Categories: Today's Headlines

Obama 'engagement' policy 'enabled Boston, San Bernardino attacks'
Administration courts terrorist front groups despite its own evidence  

Jordan's King dissolves parliament, names caretaker PM
King Abdullah appointed veteran politician Hani Mulqi as prime minister after dissolving parliament by royal decree on Sunday, following the end of its four-year term, and charged him with conducting new elections by October.  

Defiant Blair is ready for ‘full debate’ on ‘brutal’ Chilcot report
Leaks have suggested that it is expected to be heavily critical of Blair, but will not call for criminal charges against him.  

CHANCE OF STORMS ON MEMORIAL DAY
NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of G1-class geomagnetic storms on May 30th when Earth enters a high-speed stream solar wind flowing from this coronal hole..  

Spate of earthquakes rattle eastern Taiwan
Three earthquakes rocked eastern Taiwan Monday morning, with the largest one measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale, according to the Central Weather Bureau.  

Earthquake jolts Saumlaki, Maluku
A tectonic earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter Scale jolted Saumlaki, the capital of Southwest Maluku, on Monday at 3:20 a.m. local time.  

Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents
...It used to be that only a handful of countries had access to sophisticated hacking and spying tools. But these days...countries, be they small...like the Emirates, or poor...like Ethiopia, are buying commercial spyware or hiring and training programmers to develop their own hacking and surveillance tools. The barriers to join the global surveillance apparatus have never been lower.  

Pleading for Peace in Chicago Amid Fears of a Bloody Summer
During Memorial Day weekend, this city reopens its Lake Michigan beaches, regular fireworks displays start at Navy Pier, and the downtown streets and spruced-up Riverwalk are crowded with tourists. But the holiday weekend is often seen here as the start of heightened violence as well...“If something doesn’t change...I’m worried that we could be looking at a blood bath,” said the Rev. Corey Brooks  

Syria conflict: Chief opposition negotiator resigns
The chief negotiator of Syria's main opposition umbrella group, Mohammed Alloush, has resigned over what he called the failure of peace talks. Mr Alloush, from the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said the talks had not brought a political deal or eased the plight of Syrians in besieged areas.  

A 22-year-old 'molded' to vote for Hillary Clinton explains why he and his wife are supporting Trump
Trump Voter: We are young, urban, and have a happy future planned. We seem molded to be perfect young Hillary supporters. But we're not. Both of us voted Libertarian in 2012, and ideologically we remain so. But in 2016? We're both going for Trump.  

Another Real Estate Crash Looms: Sam Zell Dumps Holdings, Warns "The Fed's Deferred Reality For Too Long"
If you haven’t heard yet, median home prices in the United States are on a tear having reached all-time highs in April. To boot, rental prices have gone insane, showing a year-over-year inflationary increase of 8%. On top of that, stock markets are rocketing back to their own all time highs based on the premise that the U.S. economy is seeing healthy growth. By all official accounts, it appears that we’re back on track.  

Israel Thanks Russia for Returning Tank From 1982 War
Israel's prime minister has thanked the Russian President for agreeing to return a tank from a battle in the 1982 Lebanon war from which three soldiers are still missing in action. Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday thanking Vladimir Putin. It says that after the war Syria delivered the tank to the Russian army and it later ended up in a Moscow museum.  

Libertarians name former Republican governor as presidential pick
Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, on Sunday won the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, a sliver group hoping to make an outsized impact in this election year.  

Iran says its pilgrims will not attend haj in Saudi
Iran said on Sunday its pilgrims would not attend the annual Muslim haj pilgrimage, blaming regional rival Saudi Arabia for "sabotage" and failing to guarantee the safety of pilgrims.  

California Billionaire Tom Steyer Launches Spanish-Language Ads Attacking Donald Trump
California billionaire Tom Steyer stars in a new Spanish-language television commerical attacking presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.  

Increasing Tensions Between the United States and China Create Unstable World
May 30th, 2016
CommentaryMichael Snyder
Categories: Contemporary Issues

What happens when the two largest economies on the planet start fighting a trade war with one another?  Well, we are about to find out.  As you will see below, the U.S. has gone "nuclear" on China in a trade dispute over steel, and the Chinese response is likely to be at least as strong.  
Meanwhile, events in the South China Sea have brought tensions between the Chinese government and the Obama administration to a boiling point.  The Obama administration strongly insists that China does not have a legal right to those islands, and in China there is now talk that it may ultimately be necessary to confront the United States militarily in order keep control of them.  

Most Americans may not realize this, but the relationship between the United States and China is officially going down the tubes, and this is likely to have very significant consequences during the years to come.

Let's start with the trade war that has erupted.  About a week ago, we learned that the Obama administration had decided to "go nuclear" on China by imposing a 522 percent duty on cold-rolled steel from China that is used in certain kinds of manufacturing...

In some regard, China has reason to be angry: the US unleashed what is nothing short of a nuclear bomb in its rapidly escalating trade war with China, and recently imposed duties of 522% on cold-rolled steel used in automobiles and other manufacturing,  In doing so it has rendered Chinese exports to the US unsustainable and will force even more excess Chinese production to remain landlocked within China's borders, making the domestic glut, and price collapse, that much worse.

Subsequently, it was announced that a 450 percent duty will be imposed on corrosion-resistant steel from China...

Corrosion-resistant steel from China will face final U.S. anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties of up to 450 percent under the U.S. Commerce Department's latest clampdown on a glut of steel imports, the agency said on Wednesday.

Needless to say, the Chinese are less than amused, because these "shock and awe" trade duties were clearly designed to punish China.

And of course the truth is that China has been abusing us for years, so there is definitely a case to be made that they deserve even harsher treatment.  However, we need to keep in mind that the Chinese will retaliate for this.  And when they retaliate, it will likely be quite painful for us.  But for the moment, they are just issuing vague threats...

China's Commerce Ministry said it was extremely dissatisfied at what it called the "irrational" move by the United States, which it said would harm cooperation between the two countries.

"China will take all necessary steps to strive for fair treatment and to protect the companies' rights," it said, without elaborating.

Meanwhile, events in the South China Sea continue to push the United States and China toward conflict.  Let me summarize a few of the most important things that we have seen over the past month...

-In early May, Chinese authorities refused to give permission to the U.S.S. John C. Stennis battle group to make a routine port call at Hong Kong.  The Chinese had not turned away a U.S. aircraft carrier in almost a decade, and many believe that this was in direct response to comments that U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter had made regarding China's territorial claims in the South China Sea.

-Subsequently, the Obama administration sent the U.S.S. William P. Lawrence sailing within 12 nautical miles of the disputed islands in the South China Sea.  This was the third time that Obama has sent naval vessels cruising by those islands, and it provoked an extremely angry response from China.

-Just last week, two Chinese fighters and a U.S. spy plane nearly collided in mid-air approximately 50 miles away from Hainan island.  This incident made headlines all over the planet.

Most Americans seem to believe that the Chinese are our "friends", but in China the perspective is completely different.

The Chinese consider the United States to be their number one long-term strategic adversary, and they have been working feverishly to prepare for a future conflict with us.

For example, China just conducted a successful test of a new hypersonic glide vehicle that we do not have any defense against.  The following comes from the Washington Free Beacon...

China successfully flight tested its new high-speed maneuvering warhead last week, days after Russia carried out its own hypersonic glider test, according to Pentagon officials.

The test of the developmental DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle was monitored after launch Friday atop a ballistic missile fired from the Wuzhai missile launch center in central China, said officials familiar with reports of the test.

The maneuvering glider, traveling at several thousand miles per hour, was tracked by satellites as it flew west along the edge of the atmosphere to an impact area in the western part of the country.

In addition, just today there were global headlines announcing that China is poised to send subs carrying nuclear missiles into the Pacific for the first time ever...

The Chinese military is poised to send submarines armed with nuclear missiles into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, arguing that new US weapons systems have so undermined Beijing's existing deterrent force that it has been left with no alternative.

Chinese military officials are not commenting on the timing of a maiden patrol, but insist the move is inevitable.

They point to plans unveiled in March to station the US Thaad anti-ballistic system in South Korea, and the development of hypersonic glide missiles potentially capable of hitting China less than an hour after launch, as huge threats to the effectiveness of its land-based deterrent force.

Let us hope that a full-blown shooting war with China does not erupt any time soon, but the reality is that we are already locked in a conflict with the Chinese on a number of different levels.

In a recent piece, XKeyscore summarized some of the ways in which China is already seeking to gain the upper hand...

Economic warfare: purchase and/or sale of U.S. treasury bills, Yuan manipulation, government subsidized output (consumer goods), and trade/tariff manipulation.

Cyber-warfare: Engaging in data theft, backdoors, viruses, hacking

Cyber-kinetic warfare: The creation and deployment of Stuxnet-type viruses, and hacking which lead to physical damage of infrastructure such as power grids, nuclear facilities, hydroelectric and telecommunications systems.

Socio-political warfare: establishment of "Confucian Centers" in the US and around the globe, and the funding of US universities in exchange for roles in university policy-making processes, which often in turn promote communist ideology.

Territorial: China runs port operations in many of the worlds largest and most strategically valuable ports and SLOCs (Sea Lines of Communication). The best example is the Panama canal. Both ends of the canal are controlled by China.

To most Americans, our rapidly deteriorating relationship with China is not much of an issue right now, and very few of our politicians are even talking about it.

However, I am fully convinced that this is an extremely ominous development, and that it will have very, very serious implications for our country during the years to come.

Embryonic Research Raises New Ethical Concerns
May 30th, 2016
CommentaryTom Alego
Categories: Contemporary Issues

Scientific advancements continue to be made in medicine at a tremendous pace. And although much of it benefits mankind, the methods used for research and testing can at times push the boundaries of ethical and moral considerations to new limits.
One such area under recent scrutiny is that of human embryo research techniques.

As recently reported by Rob Stein for npr.org, scientists have been able to make and study human embryos in their labs for decades. But they have never been able to keep them alive outside a woman's womb for more than a week.

That limitation meant scientists were unable to conduct a range of detailed research into early human development. But now researchers say they have discovered a way to keep human embryos alive in the laboratory about a week longer than ever before, and through a critical period of development.

It's a step they say will yield important insights into human development and could lead to a better understanding of the factors that cause miscarriages and birth defects. But as Stein further explains, the advance is reviving a debate about the ethics of conducting experiments on human embryos in the laboratory.

Specifically, the move has raised questions about whether to change a long-standing rule that has limited research on human embryos to the first 14 days of their development.

The research, recently published in two papers in Nature and Nature Cell Biology, builds on a modern discovery by Zernicka-Goetz's group showing how to keep mouse embryos alive longer in the lab.

The next big question was: Would the same approach keep human embryos alive longer? Until now, the upper limit for human embryos was about seven days.

Zernicka-Goetz's group and a separate team at Rockefeller University in New York decided to try. And it worked. Human embryos kept developing in the lab for about another week.

Zernicka-Goetz says being able to go past the previous limit is "extremely important" from a scientific point of view. That's because the seventh day of development is the time when the human embryo becomes embedded within the body of the mother -- when it becomes implanted in the womb.

Scientists had thought embryos could only keep developing if they were safely in the womb and receiving instructions from the mother's body.

"That was a big eureka moment in the lab," said Ali Brinvalou, an embryologist at Rockefeller University in New York. "All the information necessary and sufficient to have the embryo move forward is already contained within those handful of cells...that was a very big surprise to us and to the field."

Researchers know relatively little about how a tiny ball of cells that makes up an embryo starts to become a complex human. It's been a complete "black box," Brinvalou says.

The advance should help scientists investigate many long-standing questions such as: Why do so many pregnancies end in miscarriages? How could infertility treatments be improved? What causes birth defects? How do embryonic stem cells really work?

But as opponents equally ask: does the end really justify the means? For those who think experimenting on human embryos is morally wrong, going even further is deeply troubling.

"The 14-day rule has kept it pretty limited in terms of what scientists could do. Once that goes, then it begins to sort of say: 'It's open season on human embryos. Anything goes,' "said Daniel Sulmasy, a doctor and bioethicist at the University of Chicago.

"The question has to be: 'Are there any limits to what we will do to human beings in order to gain scientific knowledge?' And then who counts as a human being?" he posed.

According to Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University: "Policymakers and others have looked at that developmental time point and thought: That might actually be significant for peoples' moral beliefs if they think that's when you get a unique individual who finally appears for the first time".

Hyun stressed, however, that any change to the 14-day rule would require the same kind of careful, coordinated international debate that created the rule in the first place, to satisfy moral qualms. 

Ben Johnson in a recent article for lifesitenews.com reported that proponents of the latest planned extension are petitioning lawmakers to lift sanctions that would keep scientists from experimenting on newly conceived babies longer.

Researchers from Cambridge University, King's College, and Rockefeller University said in two separate reports that they stopped at 13 days only to avoid violating an internationally accepted law. At least 12 nations restrict the amount of time a newly conceived child may be kept alive in a laboratory to 14 days, the point at which scientists believe "individuality" begins.

Pro-life experts said the experimentation destroys human life and could lead to grave ethical dilemmas by extending the research. "No human being should be used for lethal experimentation, no matter their age or stage of development," said Dr. David Prentice, a professor of molecular genetics and an Advisory Board Member for the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center. 

"The 14-day rule is itself arbitrary and does not assuage those who believe life begins at the moment of sperm-egg fusion. Moreover, allowing experiments on human embryos beyond 14 days post-fertilization risks the lives of untold more human beings, because it further encourages creation and destruction for research purposes.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, called the experimentation "sick and twisted."

"Science has undeniably proven that a new human life, with unrepeatable DNA, begins at conception," Hawkins said. "There is no reason for experimentation on that human life and science itself should not be heralding the fact that a tiny human being can survive now for two weeks outside of the womb, all for the sole purpose of experimentation."

Dr. Prentice noted that embryonic stem cell research "has yielded no benefit thus far," leading even its most vocal advocates, such as Michael J. Fox, to admit it has not lived up to its promise.

"If this research does not stop at 14 days, where does it stop?" asked Prentice. "This is a risky step which could encourage further eugenic attitudes and actions."

Dr. Prentice encouraged Congress "to have a full and open debate on the issue of human embryo research before the research community moves further without oversight."

Professor David Jones, director of the Roman Catholic Anscombe Bioethics Centre, holds the view that all research on embryos is unethical. He was quoted in another recent article by Christian Post reporter Harry Farley as follows: 

"In the future, this may even be seen as the first step towards culturing babies outside the womb, where the child is not only conceived outside the protection of his or her mother's body but no such protection is even envisaged at any stage.

Human life and human pregnancy should not be separated in this way. On a technical level it is a scientific breakthrough but it is also a further step away from humane and ethical science and a further step towards an increasingly inhuman future."

It would seem that scientific research is increasingly moving towards the school of thought that favors any outcome perceived to be beneficial - that the end always justifies the means no matter the ethical cost.

Christians, too, are weighing in on the issue publicly. Nola Leach for Christiantoday.com recently quoted Matt Chandler on the 'Together for the Gospel blog'. Chandler reportedly made the point that if we don't speak out for the dignity and sanctity of life; we are not truly pro-life - just nominally so.

He makes the case for Christians to be active in standing for the unborn and outlines some helpful ways of doing so. Writing to your elected representative and participating in the democratic process when pro-life issues come before parliament are good ways to turn your beliefs into actions. 

Leach described Chandler's timely reminder as all the more urgent considering that in the UK, the sanctity of human life is under threat as never before.

As she expounded: "...for me any attempt to grow a human embryo in a Petri-dish in labs across the country is ethically, deeply troubling, whether for one, two or 13 days. Science has so far failed to prove that life does not begin at conception. 

Instead, we know that at conception a new DNA strand is formed, distinct from the mother and father. Evidently, this shows that a person, a real human being is present in the womb. I believe a human embryo, whether or not it's in the womb, is actually a human life...The unborn babies need voices to be raised in their defense".

She concluded: "I am not anti-science...bioethics must have some boundaries to stop us doing what we have no right to do. Human beings are not God. We should be very wary of acting as if we were".

Americans Consume 10 Hours of Programming a Day from the Big 6
May 30th, 2016
CommentaryMichael Snyder
Categories: Warning

If you allow someone to pump hours of "programming" into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world.  

In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market.  

In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the "programming" that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world.  So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous "propaganda matrix"?

Just think about your own behavior.  Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on.  Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media.  In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence.

It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out.  It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of "programming" from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become.

These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on.  For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about?  If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place.

Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations.

I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe.  They come directly out of Nielsen's "Total Audience Report", and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes through various methods each day...

Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes

Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes

Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Using  a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes

When you add all of those numbers together, it comes to a grand total of more than 10 hours.

And keep in mind that going to movie theaters, playing video games and reading books are behaviors that are not even on this list.

What in the world are we doing to ourselves?

The combination of watching live television and watching time-shifted television alone comes to a total of more than five hours.

If you feed five hours of something into your mind day after day, it is going to change you.  There is no way around that.  You may think that you are strong enough to resist the programming, but the truth is that it affects all of us in very subtle ways that we do not even understand.

And as I mentioned above, there are just six giant corporations that account for almost all of the programming that we receive through our televisions.  Below is a list of these six corporations along with a sampling of the various media properties that they own..

Comcast – NBC – Telemundo - Universal Pictures - Focus Features - USA Network – Bravo – CNBC - The Weather Channel – MSNBC – Syfy – NBCSN - Golf Channel - Esquire Network - E! – Cloo – Chiller - Universal HD - Comcast SportsNet - Universal Parks & Resorts - Universal Studio Home Video - The Walt Disney Company - ABC Television Network – ESPN - The Disney Channel - A&E – Lifetime - Marvel Entertainment – Lucasfilm Walt Disney Pictures - Pixar Animation Studios - Disney Mobile - Disney Consumer Products - Interactive Media - Disney Theme Parks - Disney Records - Hollywood Records -Miramax Films - Touchstone Pictures.

News Corporation

Fox Broadcasting Company - Fox News Channel - Fox Business Network - Fox Sports 1 - Fox Sports 2 - National Geographic - Nat Geo Wild – FX – FXX - FX Movie Channel - Fox Sports Networks - The Wall Street Journal - The New York Post - Barron's – Smart Money – HarperCollins - 20th Century Fox - Fox Searchlight Pictures - Blue Sky Studios – Beliefnet   -Zondervan - Time Warner – CNN - The CW – HBO – Cinemax - Cartoon Network – HLN - NBA TV – TBS – TNT – TruTV- Turner Classic Movies - Warner Bros. - Castle Rock - DC Comics - Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment - New Line Cinema - Sports Illustrated – Fortune - Marie Claire - People Magazine – Viacom – MTV – Nickelodeon - VH1 – BET - Comedy Central - Paramount Pictures - Paramount Home Entertainment - Country Music Television (CMT) - Spike TV - The Movie Channel  - TV Land - CBS Corporation - CBS Television Network

The CW (along with Time Warner) - CBS Sports Network – Showtime – TVGN - CBS Radio, Inc. - CBS Television Studios - Simon & Schuster - Infinity Broadcasting - Westwood One Radio Network

Fortunately, those enormous media conglomerates do not have quite the same monopoly over the Internet, but we are starting to see a tremendous amount of consolidation in the online world as well.  Just check out these numbers...

Overall, the top 10 publishers -- together owning around 60 news sites -- account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.

The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.

The battle for the future of this nation is a battle for the hearts and minds of individuals.

And it is hard to see how things will be turned in a dramatically different direction as long as most of us are willingly feeding our hearts and minds with hours of "programming" that is controlled by the elite each day.

The good news is that there are signs of an awakening.  More Americans than ever are becoming disenchanted with the mainstream media, and this is showing up in recent survey numbers.  Here is one example...

Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans' skepticism about what they read on social media.

Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of other institutions.

As Americans (and people all over the world) have lost confidence in the mainstream media, they have been seeking out other sources of news and entertainment.  This has greatly fueled the rise of the alternative media, and the dozens of websites all over the Internet where this article will ultimately be published are examples of this explosion.

You can only enslave people for so long.  Ultimately, they will want to break free of the chains that are holding them back and they will want to find the truth.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves.  If you find that you are still addicted to the "programming" that the giant media corporations are feeding you, I would encourage you to start unplugging from the matrix more frequently.

In the end, you will be glad that you did.

'Berning' the Jews: Sanders and the Democratic Platform Committee
May 30th, 2016
CommentaryBY EDWARD ALEXANDER/ALGEMEINER.COM
Categories: Contemporary Issues

In mid-April of this year the exigencies of an impending primary election in New York, where he lagged far behind Hillary Clinton among likely Jewish Democratic voters, forced Bernie Sanders to suspend his national Jewish "outreach" coordinator--one Simone Zimmerman.
It was revealed that her ostensibly warm Jewish heart had a very cold spot reserved for Israel. That he had appointed such a person to such a position in the first place was a true indication of where Sanders' own sympathies lay. Any uncertainty about this was put to rest in a debate in Brooklyn where he said: "I believe the United States and the rest of the world have got to work together to help the Palestinian people." He is now practicing what he preached.

No sooner did a desperate Hillary Clinton direct the head of the DNC to bestow upon Sanders five of the fifteen positions on the Democratic Party's platform committee than he hastened to fill two of them with well-known Israel-haters, or what he calls "helpers" of the Palestinian people, and a third with a politician who is a convert to Islam and once recommended Louis Farrakhan as "a role model for black youth," and "not an anti-Semite." 

Sanders has in the past displayed unseemly envy and sycophantic admiration of foreign countries--the socialism of Sweden, the dictatorship of Nicaragua, the health care of Cuba, the charms of Yaroslavl as honeymoon site and sister city to Burlington, Vermont. But these appointments reveal not only his belief that the key to American foreign policy is the Arab-Israeli conflict, but that Israel's "intransigence" is the cause of the manifold miseries of the Middle East--a view that even the State Department and its most dogmatic peace-processors have finally, albeit with great sadness, abandoned.

First among Sanders' "Palestine" trio is James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab-American Institute. He rose to prominence in 1979, when he campaigned on behalf of the National Emergency Committee to Defend Ziad Abu Eain and prevent his extradition to Israel for taking part in a bombing in Tiberias that had killed two Israeli teenagers and wounded 36 others. The effort failed, and Abu Eain spent four years of a longer sentence in an Israeli jail (before being released in a prisoner exchange). 

Zogby has for many years, usually within the Democratic Party, worked to redress what he considers the excessive influence of American Jews upon foreign policy. He is a firm believer in the Israeli-Nazi equation: how dare the Jews monopolize all that beautiful Holocaust suffering which the Palestinians, ex post facto, would very much like to share? Besides, reasons Zogby, if the Palestinians are the new Jews, then of course the Israelis must be the new Nazis. None of this has disturbed Sanders, a Jew who refers to himself with the evasive locution: "proud child of Polish immigrants."

Sanders' second appointee is Cornel West, the perpetually frenzied black academic who has condemned President Obama himself as "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate  plutocrats." West is the longtime associate of Michael Lerner, who pioneered the Palestinian cause within the Jewish community, and was once Hillary Clinton's Rasputin in the White House. West endorsed Sanders's candidacy at an early stage of the campaign, and just after publicly summoning a number of prominent blacks to call for the elimination of Israel from the family of nations. 

Sanders did not flinch from the endorsement or regret its timing; and now West has been rewarded. This appointment, more than any other, expresses Sanders' desire [to] epater les Juifs; the eminent sociologist Werner Cohn shrewdly calls it Sanders' declaration of "a final break with the Jewish people."

The third "Palestinian" appointment is Keith Ellison, a Catholic convert to Islam who is a congressman from Minnesota. Unlike Zogby and West, he has not made the end of Israel his raison d'etre, but he has long maintained warm and supportive relations with such apologists for Palestinian terrorism as CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), a front group for Hamas. He has come to its defense against allegations brought by the FBI and members of  Congress. 

In October 2006  he was the keynote speaker at a CAIR conference in Florida. In 2008 he called on listeners to a local Tampa radio station to give their support to Sami al-Arian. Arian, a former professor at University of South Florida, had confessed two years earlier to conspiring to supply goods and services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization responsible for numerous suicide attacks on Israel.

Sanders' appointment of this trio expresses his confidence (perhaps justified) that devotion to the Palestinian cause is not only the litmus test of modern progressivism but is now even dearer to the hearts of Democratic voters than abortion, gay marriage, "All Gender" bathrooms, and other liberal ventures into the legalization of forbidden fruit.

Sanders did show some awareness of foreign countries other than Israel and "Palestine" by  giving one of the two remaining spots on the DNC platform committee to a global warming zealot who also advocates the "only one child per family" scheme, which has had such an exciting history in China.

There is, to be sure, one way in which Israel really is at the center of world affairs: it is the way of hallucination. "We live in an age," observed David Nirenberg in his history of anti-Judaism, "in which millions of people are exposed daily to some variant of the argument that the challenges of the world they live in are best explained in terms of 'Israel.'"

Sanders constantly repeats that all he desires in American Middle East policy is greater "even-handedness," i.e., less "favoritism" on behalf of Israel. What this really means is that Israel must be deprived of its single powerful ally in the UN and in world affairs generally. On May 25, for example, the World Health Organization voted for a UN resolution to single out Israel as the only violator of "elemental, physical and environmental health" in the world, and commissioned a WHO delegation to investigate and report on "the health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory." 

The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and other European Union states voted "Yes" to singling out Israel as the world's only violator of human decency in medical matters. The UN assembly did not address Syrian hospitals being bombed by Syrian and Russian warplanes, or millions of Yemenis denied access to food and water by the Saudi-led bombings and blockade; neither did it pass a resolution about Venezuelan citizens being starved by their (Sanders-style) "democratic socialist" government. Out of 24 items on the meeting's agenda, only one, Item No. 19 against Israel, focused on a specific country. 

For good measure a WHO delegation was commissioned to investigate health conditions in "the occupied Syrian Golan." No doubt these same nations would much prefer that ISIS take charge of the Golan inhabitants' health and well-being. In such situations, the United States, even under the reign of Obama, remains Israel's only reliable ally and support. "Even-handedness" has long been a euphemism for abandonment.

But that aspect of the matter does not interest Sanders. That Israeli Jews have been under attack in a siege, at once military and ideological, that has lasted for 68 years is no more likely to interfere with his telescopic philanthropy than is the current plight of Jewish students right here in American universities to arouse his sympathy. These students are constantly assailed, physically as well as verbally, by the same thuggish "progressives" who have carried the "Bernie" banners and worn the "Bernie" shirts in the anti-Trump riots in Chicago and Nevada.

One aspect of the American "exceptionalism" that has so often provoked Barack Obama's sneer is the near absence of antisemitism from our national politics. It would be ironic if it were now introduced into the political arena by a Jew. Sanders, let us remember, is a disciple of Noam Chomsky, whom Mayor Sanders of Burlington liked to bring to a town that needed its own foreign policy as "a very vocal and important voice in the wilderness of intellectual life in America...a person who [sic] I think we're all very proud of." 

Chomsky, too, has endorsed his friend Sanders for the Democratic nomination; and he must be  greatly pleased by the way in which his disciple has gone him one point better by promoting a negative political campaign against the "one percent," in the very best tradition of demagogic European assaults on the Tenth Commandment, the culminating one, against covetousness.

It should come as no surprise that a modern American Jew has opened the door to antisemitism in American politics. In 2008, shortly after I had written about the spread of anti-Israel venom in segments of the Democratic Party, the late Barry Rubin (an eminent scholar of Middle Eastern affairs) sent me a consolatory note: "Well, look at the bright side, we're not doing so badly. 

Take away the Jews and Muslims in America and people like Israel!" We already have a plethora of hole and corner sects of Jews arrayed against Israel: Jewish Progressives against Israel; Holocaust Survivors against Israel; J Street (a favorite of Sanders'); Children of Holocaust Survivors against Israel; Jewish Voice for Peace; Survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto against Israel; Jewish postmodernists against Israel; Grandchildren of  Holocaust survivors against Israel; Jewish Berkeley Professors against Israel; and so on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. 

But Sanders' campaign, which is by now less for the presidency than for doctrinal control of the Democratic Party by its left wing, has taken this campaign for politicide to a new level.