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The Holy City, a ‘burdensome stone’

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The head of a messianic Jewish ministry says Jerusalem has definitely become the “burdensome stone” prophesized in the Old Testament.

Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned U.N. members earlier this week that President Trump “will be watching” to see who votes to condemn the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to any country that supported the U.N. resolution. Most countries didn’t heed the warning as the General Assembly approved the anti-U.S. resolution 128-to-9 with 35 abstentions on Thursday.

Major U.S. aid recipients that ignored Trump’s threat and supported the resolution included Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Joining the U.S. is opposing the resolution were Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, and Togo.

The U.N. move followed a call by Muslim leaders for the world body to recognize East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. Jan Markell, founder and director of Olive Tree Ministries, points out that Jerusalem doesn’t appear anywhere in the Quran.

“Jerusalem is honestly rather irrelevant to the Islamic world,” she explains. “It may be perhaps their third or fourth most significant location, but unfortunately they’re seizing on President Trump’s declaration of a week or so ago.”

Markell views the vote as “just the further fulfillment of Zechariah 12:3, where Jerusalem is becoming the burdensome stone – at least to portions of the world that do not want to accept … the action that [President Trump] took.”

The ministry leader points to another serious warning in the Bible.

“Joel 3 promises judgment on anybody who divides God’s land – and I just hope we don’t have a president who would do that now,” she shares. “I hope and pray we don’t ever get a president who will divide the land.” Markell says that judgment will come to any nations that do.

Ambassador Haley said the vote will make no difference on U.S. plans to move its embassy to Jerusalem, but it “will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N., and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N.”

“And this vote will be remembered,” she warned. (Click to Source)

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Is the United Nations Fulfilling Ancient Biblical Prophecy?

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On Dec. 21, 2017, the U.N. united as one to stand against one city on the planet: Jerusalem. Twenty-five centuries earlier, the prophet Zechariah wrote these words from the Lord, “I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle” (Zech. 14:2a) Did the U.N. just move us one step closer to fulfilling this ancient prophecy?

Before answering this question, let’s look at the events on the ground.

First, the U.N. once again distinguished itself for hypocrisy by targeting Israel for its criticism—specifically, America’s support of Israel—while remaining silent on so many issues of world importance.

What has the U.N. been doing during the horrific war in Syria? Where has the U.N. been during the attempted genocide of Christians in the Middle East? Decades earlier, what did the U.N. have to say about Tiananmen Square in China or Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare against the Kurds? Yet when America recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the U.N. is an uproar.

As I noted previously, groups like UNWatch.org have documented the U.N’.s consistent policy of singling out Israel for rebuke and condemnation while virtually ignoring atrocities committed on a mass scale by other nations, including Israel’s neighbors.

To give one case in point, during the UN General Assembly’s 61st session (2006-2007), “the time spent by ambassadors on enacting the 22nd anti-Israel resolution of the year was time not spent on passing a single resolution on Sudan’s genocide in Darfur.”

So, while Sudanese Christians were being slaughtered en masse by Muslim soldiers and gangs, the U.N. General Assembly spent its time enacting 22 anti-Israel resolutions.

In 2015, as noted by Israeli journalist Noga Gur-Arieh, “At the closing of the 59th U.N. Commission on the Status of Women … only one political resolution was passed; one that accuses Israel of mistreating Palestinian women, in all aspects of life.”

A similar resolution was passed in 2016 by the same U.N. Commission.

So, of all the nations on earth, only Israel was singled out for its alleged mistreatment of women.

That’s why Abba Eban, Israel’s legendary diplomat, once remarked, “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”

Second, in anticipation of the U.N. vote, the United States handled things exactly as it should have: with a strong word of rebuke and warning.

After all, different international leaders did not simply call President Trump and say, “We strongly differ with your recognition of Jerusalem.” Instead, in the most public forum available, 128 nations stood together to condemn America for doing was what right and righteous, declaring our decision “null and void.”

Nikki Haley’s words to the UN before the vote said it all: “To its shame, the United Nations has long been a hostile place for the state of Israel. Both the current and the previous Secretary-Generals have objected to the U.N.’s disproportionate focus on Israel. It’s a wrong that undermines the credibility of this institution, and that in turn is harmful for the entire world.”

Good for you, Mrs. Haley. Call the U.N. on the carpet.

Then, after articulating all the good our country does around the world, along with its support for the U.N., she rebuked the U.N. for disrespecting America, saying, “The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.”

And finally: “America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do and it is the right thing to do. This vote will make a difference in how Americans look at the U.N. And this vote will be remembered.”

Here, here, Ambassador Haley!

Third, the seven nations that stood with Israel and America today are a most unusual group, consisting of Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Togo and Palau. Honestly, now, how many of us heard of some of these countries before? And how many of us could locate some of them on the map?

Whether it was out of economic dependence on the USA, a connection to Israel, or something else, these nations should be remembered for good in the days to come. They did what was courageous and correct.

As for the countries that abstained (35 in all), two (the Czech Republic and the Philippines) already stated they are considering relocating their embassies; a number of African nations have developed solid ties with Israel; some might have considered their need for American dollars and others might have remembered Israel’s kindness to them (such as Mexico, which was greatly aided by Israel after their disastrous earthquake in September, although Mexico did use its floor time to speak critically).

Already, “U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley invited representatives of countries who didn’t vote in favor of the United Nations General Assembly’s Jerusalem resolution to a reception as ‘thank you for your friendship to the United States.'”

Donald Trump has always appreciated loyalty.

But what of the matter of ancient prophecy? Is there a connection between the U.N.’s vote and the Bible?

I would say yes, for at least three reasons: 1) The vote confirms international hostility towards a Jewish Jerusalem. 2) The vote reminds us that the biblical authors were inspired when predicting that an end-time coalition of nations would come against a Jewish Jerusalem. 3) The vote tells us that, just as Scripture indicates, the city of Jerusalem alone is the whole world’s business (see Zech. 12:3).

Of course, this does not set a time frame for a united attack on a Jewish Jerusalem, and we don’t know if “all nations” (in the words of Zechariah) means every nation on earth or simply a worldwide coalition. But, after watching the last 2,500 years of history, coupled with the U.N.’s anti-Jerusalem vote this week, it’s hard to read the Bible and think that the writers just guessed things right. What are the chances of that? (Click to Source)

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There may be a volcano forming under New England, scientists warn

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If you’re looking for a volcano there’s a number of places you’d probably check first, like Hawaii or even Yellowstone National Park, but new data suggests you might want to turn your attention to the northeastern United States. Researchers from Rutgers University just revealed that a large swelling of hot rock is bubbling up under New England, and it may be the first hints that a new volcano is forming under our feet.

The findings are incredibly interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which because the east coast of the United States isn’t exactly a hotbed of potentially dangerous geological activity. Despite that, the data is undeniable, and it seems as though there is definitely something rising up from deep within the Earth in the region.

“The upwelling we detected is like a hot air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England,” lead author Vadim Levin of Rutgers’ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences says. “It is not Yellowstone (National Park)-like, but it’s a distant relative in the sense that something relatively small – no more than a couple hundred miles across – is happening.”

The research, which was published in the journal Geology, utilized data from the EarthScope program. EarthScope gathers a wealth of information from thousands of different monitoring devices positioned all over the United States. It’s the largest-scale seismic measurement system around, and it is proving its ability to provide scientists with incredible insights.

EarthScope’s measurements show that the upwelling is occurring deep beneath parts of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. If a volcano were to eventually form, there’s really no telling where it would would actually emerge, but the process would take a long, long time.

The would-be volcano growing under New England would take potentially millions of years to actually form, and because of that Levin says that there’s no reason for current generations to worry about waking up to a neighborhood covered in lava. “It will likely take millions of years for the upwelling to get where it’s going,” Levin explains. “The next step is to try to understand how exactly it’s happening.” (Click to Source)

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At least six dead after Amtrak train derails, leaving rail cars dangling above I-5

Amtrak train derails south of Tacoma

DUPONT, Wash. — At least six people were killed Monday morning and dozens more were injured when an Amtrak train derailed south of Tacoma, leaving rail cars dangling above Interstate 5.

Four hospitals say at least 50 people were taken to hospitals in Pierce and Thurston counties, but didn’t immediately report all of their conditions. More than a dozen had critical or serious injuries, authorities said.

The train derailed about 40 miles south of Seattle before 8 a.m. Monday, above a busy stretch of I-5 between Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Olympia.

All but one of the 14 rail cars came off the tracks, according to Washington State Patrol Trooper Brooke Bova. The train fell from the overpass onto five cars and two semi trucks below on I-5. Nobody in those vehicles died.

 Local blood centers were asking for donations.

Southbound I-5 will remain closed all day at Mounts Road, authorities said.

A U.S. official who was briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press preliminary signs indicate the Amtrak train may have struck something before going off the tracks. An Amtrak train also derailed in nearby Steilacoom in July

A frantic call for help

Emergency radio transmissions between the train and the dispatcher were frantic and dramatic:

Dispatcher: Hey guys, what happened?

AMTRAK 501: Uh, we were coming around the corner to take the bridge over I-5 there, right north into Nisqually and we went on the ground.

Dispatcher: …Is everybody OK?

AMTRAK 501: I’m still figuring that out. We got cars everywhere and down onto the highway.

A new route

Transitdocs.com, a website that maps Amtrak train locations and speeds using data from the railroad’s train tracker app, says Train 501 was going 81.1 mph moments before the derailment Monday.

The state Department of Transportation posted information about the $180.7 million project online that says the maximum speed along that stretch of track is 79 mph.

Board member Bella Dinn-Zarr told reporters in Washington, D.C., that it’s too early to tell whether speed contributed to the accident.

The new route was designed to speed up service by removing passenger trains from a route along Puget Sound that’s bogged down by curves, single-track tunnels and freight traffic.

The mayor of Lakewood, Washington, a city along the route, predicted a deadly crash. But Don Anderson thought it’d involve a fast-moving train hitting a car or pedestrian at a crossing.

Images and video from the scene showed an Amtrak train car hanging partway off an overpass bridge and resting on the highway.

The train was carrying passengers – including many transportation officials – set to embark on the first run of Amtrak’s new route 501 from Seattle to Portland. There were 78 passengers and five crew members aboard.

‘Cars … are hanging over the overpass’

Chris Karnes, the chair of Pierce Transit’s advisory board, was on board the train and said on Twitter, “people are hurt.”

“I’m not sure what got hit. I’m not sure what happened,” Karnes said.

Karnes said he was positioned near the medical tents set up in the median between north- and southbound I-5, just south of DuPont.

“The only car that is on the tracks is the rear locomotive. There are several cars that are hanging over the overpass,” Karnes said.

Casey Bever lives near the crash, and drove past it Monday morning.

“It was the most emergency vehicles I’ve ever seen in my life,”  Bever said on Q13 News This Morning. “Forty to 50 (emergency) cars going by in a two-to-three-minute span.”

Wendy Simmons said she arrived shortly after the derailment as people were helping the injured.

“First responders actually climbed up into the dangling cars to get people out,” Simmons said. “People were pulling first aid kits out of their cars — putting jackets on people.”

Amtrak released the following statement just before 9:00 a.m.:

“Amtrak is aware of an incident with Train 501, Cascades service from Seattle to Portland. Emergency services are on the scene and Amtrak management is responding. Some injuries are reported.

“Amtrak service south of Seattle is temporarily suspended. Service from Seattle to points north and east is continuing to operate.”

Search for loved ones

Amtrak set up a hotline for loved ones to call for more information: 800-523-9101.

Washington State Patrol Trooper Brooke Bova said a family reunification center had been set up at DuPont City Hall. Bova advised families NOT to go to the scene.

Facebook also set up a crisis response page for those in Western Washington to mark themselves safe. You can check it here.

Officials respond to ‘tragic’ crash

President Donald Trump had been briefed on the situation, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency.

“Today’s tragic incident in Pierce County is a serious and ongoing emergency,” said Gov. Jay Inslee. “Trudi and I are holding in our hearts everyone on board, and are praying for the many injured. They are our top priority, and I know first responders are doing everything to ensure everyone has the care they need.”

Other Washington state politicians said they were heartbroken to hear the news.

“Following the derailment near Olympia closely,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell. “Praying for everyone on board and affected by this. Thanks to our first responders.”

“Heartbroken by the news coming out of WA right now,” tweeted Sen. Patty Murray. “As my staff works to get more info, my thoughts are w/ everyone affected, including the 1st responders doing their best to keep people safe.”

The USDOT Federal Railroad Administration said it was working with Amtrak and WSDOT, and that the agency had investigators headed to the scene. (Click to Source)

 

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A Mysterious Blob of Hot Rock Is Building Up Under America’s Northeast

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Something is rising from the depths.

PETER DOCKRILL
18 DEC 2017

A vast mass of hot rock is welling up underneath Vermont and extending into other subterranean regions below New England, new research shows.

Scientists used a network of thousands of seismic measurement devices in the largest geological study of its kind, detecting the enormous blob upwelling under Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts – and possibly elsewhere.

“The upwelling we detected is like a hot air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England,” says geophysicist Vadim Levin from Rutgers University – New Brunswick.

Since New England doesn’t have any active volcanoes, the huge build-up is thought to be a geologically recent phenomenon, although in this case that means it could have slowly but steadily been growing for tens of millions of years.

As for whether the mass could one day erupt, that’s the way these things go, the team says – although there’s no point in panicking, since such an eventuality is still a long, long way off from happening.

“It will likely take millions of years for the upwelling to get where it’s going,” Levin explains.

“The next step is to try to understand how exactly it’s happening.”

The team analysed the blob using Earthscope – a multi-institutional network of instruments monitoring seismic movements rippling throughout the North American continent.

Buried in two years of data, the team zeroed in on New England, having previously identified a thermal anomaly that was hundreds of degrees Celsius hotter than its surroundings in the upper mantle about 200 kilometres (124.2 miles) below the surface, and measuring approximately 400 kilometres (248.5 miles) in diameter.

“It is a very large and relatively stable region,” says Levin, “but we found an irregular pattern with rather abrupt changes in it.”

Using new readings of seismic waves travelling through Earth’s underground, the team suggests the blob is welling directly under central Vermont, but it extends into western New Hampshire and also western Massachusetts.

The researchers acknowledge the mass may travel beyond these states, although they’re unable to tell from the data they used in this study. That said, as enormous as this blob is, compared to other volcanic masses churning under the continental US, it’s no giant.

“It is not Yellowstone (National Park)-like, but it’s a distant relative in the sense that something relatively small – no more than a couple hundred miles across – is happening,” explains Levin.

There’s still a lot to learn about this mass and its behaviour, but the researchers say their findings challenge what we think we know about geological conditions under this Atlantic margin of North America – and how passive we wrongly assumed it to be.

“[W]e did not expect to find abrupt changes in physical properties beneath this region,” says Levin, “and the likely explanation points to a much more dynamic regime underneath this old, geologically quiet area.”

As dynamic as it looks to be, this rising blob of hot rock still has a long journey ahead if it wants to one day reach the surface and graduate to being a proper volcano.

Whether that’s an actual possibility, nobody really can say for sure just yet.

“Maybe it didn’t have time yet, or maybe it is too small and will never make it,” Levin told National Geographic.

“Come back in 50 million years, and we’ll see what happens.”

The findings are reported in Geology.   (Click to Source)

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U.S. vetoes UN call for withdrawal of Trump Jerusalem decision

The Day of the Lord

Behold, the day of the Lord is coming,
And your spoil will be divided in your midst.
2 For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem;
The city shall be taken,
The houses rifled,
And the women ravished.
Half of the city shall go into captivity,
But the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

3 Then the Lord will go forth
And fight against those nations,
As He fights in the day of battle.
4 And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives,
Which faces Jerusalem on the east.
And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two,
From east to west,
Making a very large valley;
Half of the mountain shall move toward the north
And half of it toward the south.
5 Then you shall flee through My mountain valley,
For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal.
Yes, you shall flee
As you fled from the earthquake
In the days of Uzziah king of Judah.

Thus the Lord my God will come,
And all the saints with You.[a]

6 It shall come to pass in that day
That there will be no light;
The lights will diminish.
7 It shall be one day
Which is known to the Lord—
Neither day nor night.
But at evening time it shall happen
That it will be light.

8 And in that day it shall be
That living waters shall flow from Jerusalem,
Half of them toward the eastern sea
And half of them toward the western sea;
In both summer and winter it shall occur.
9 And the Lord shall be King over all the earth.
In that day it shall be—
“The Lord is one,”[b]
And His name one.

10 All the land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem[c] shall be raised up and inhabited in her place from Benjamin’s Gate to the place of the First Gate and the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses.

11 The people shall dwell in it;
And no longer shall there be utter destruction,
But Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.

12 And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem:

Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet,
Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets,
And their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths.

13 It shall come to pass in that day
That a great panic from the Lord will be among them.
Everyone will seize the hand of his neighbor,
And raise his hand against his neighbor’s hand;
14 Judah also will fight at Jerusalem.
And the wealth of all the surrounding nations
Shall be gathered together:
Gold, silver, and apparel in great abundance.

15 Such also shall be the plague
On the horse and the mule,
On the camel and the donkey,
And on all the cattle that will be in those camps.
So shall this plague be.

The Nations Worship the King

16 And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. 17 And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, on them there will be no rain. 18 If the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain; they shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. 19 This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.

20 In that day “HOLINESS TO THE LORD” shall be engraved on the bells of the horses. The pots in the Lord’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar. 21 Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts.[d] Everyone who sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.

Footnotes:

  1. Zechariah 14:5 Or you; Septuagint, Targum, and Vulgate read Him.
  2. Zechariah 14:9 Compare Deuteronomy 6:4
  3. Zechariah 14:10 Literally She
  4. Zechariah 14:21 Or on every pot . . . shall be (engraved) “HOLINESS TO THE LORD OF HOSTS”

Zechariah 14:1-21 New King James Version (NKJV)Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States was further isolated on Monday over President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital when it blocked a United Nations Security Council call for the declaration to be withdrawn.

The remaining 14 council members voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.”

“What we witnessed here in the Security Council is an insult. It won’t be forgotten,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said after the vote, adding that it was the first veto cast by the United States in more than six years.

“The fact that this veto is being done in defence of American sovereignty and in defence of America’s role in the Middle East peace process is not a source of embarrassment for us; it should be an embarrassment to the remainder of the Security Council,” Haley said.

The U.N. draft resolution affirmed “that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council.”

Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washington’s western allies.

“In the wake of the decision of the United States … the situation has become more tense with an increase in incidents, notably rockets fired from Gaza and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces,” U.N. Middle East peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov told the Security Council ahead of the vote.

EMERGENCY GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION

Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution had called upon all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Haley and Trump for the veto in a video clip posted on his Facebook page.

Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city’s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

Following the U.S. veto, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said Arab states, which had agreed earlier this month to seek a Security Council resolution, would meet to evaluate the situation to determine what their next steps might be.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said the Palestinians would seek a rare emergency special session of the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Trump’s decision.

Under a 1950 resolution, an emergency special session can be called for the General Assembly to consider a matter “with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures” if the Security Council fails to act.

Only 10 such sessions have been convened, and the last time the General Assembly met in such a session was in 2009 on Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories. Any outcome of such a session is non-binding, but carries political weight. (Click to Source)

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Russia says US decision on Jerusalem may worsen Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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MOSCOW: The decision by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel risks aggravating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Thursday while calling on all sides involved to show restraint.

Russia calls on all the parties concerned to refrain from actions that risk “dangerous and uncontrollable consequences”, the ministry said in a statement.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday recognised the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – a historic decision that overturns decades of US policy and risks triggering a fresh spasm of violence in the Middle East.

“I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Trump said from the White House.

“It’s the right thing to do.”

The declaration calls into question seven decades of deliberate diplomatic ambiguity about the final status of a holy city vociferously claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Trump also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, making good on a campaign promise dear to evangelical Christian and right-wing Jewish voters – as well as donors.

He said his decision marked the start of a “new approach” to solving the thorny conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Trump’s predecessors – from Bill Clinton to George Bush – made similar promises on the campaign trail, but quickly reneged upon taking office, and the burden of war and peace.

This most unlikely of presidents, who came to office with no foreign policy experience and denouncing experts, was determined to show his arrival in Washington spells the end of business as usual.

“Many presidents have said they want to do something and they didn´t do it,” Trump said in the hours leading up to his historic address.

“Whether it’s courage or they changed their mind, I can´t tell you,” he said. “I think it´s long overdue.” (Click to Source)

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46 EARTHQUAKES HAVE SHAKEN CALIFORNIA OVER THE PAST 24 HOURS

That is approximately twice the normal daily number, and much of the shaking has taken place in the southern part of the state

quake

That is approximately twice the normal daily number, and much of the shaking has taken place in the southern part of the state.  In recent weeks I have been writing repeatedly about the alarming seismic activity that we have been seeing along the west coast, and many believe that the potential for a megaquake is significantly higher than normal right now.  Unfortunately, most residents of California are not paying any attention to what is going on at all, and so if there is a major event they will be completely blindsided by it.

When a magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck near Julian, California on Wednesday, that immediately got my attention, and that quake was followed very rapidly by several others…

The shaking began at 4:33 p.m. on Wednesday when a 4.0 quake occurred nearly 10 miles beneath the earth’s surface, just east of the Earthquake Valley fault, one of the most active systems in Southern California. The temblor had originally been listed at 4.2.

The main shock was followed five minutes later by a 3.0 aftershock in the same spot. Then a 3.6 quake occurred near the same spot at 7:57 p.m. Wednesday.

Seismologists say that a 3.6 quake broke in the same area at 2:32 a.m. on Thursday, continuing the seismic spasm.

Of course Julian is not the only one that has seen a substantial earthquake over the past 24 hours.  Just 6 hours ago, a magnitude 3.2 earthquake struck Gonzales, California.  Anything in the magnitude 3 or magnitude 4 range is not going to cause any significant damage, but the concern is that these smaller quakes may be building up to something larger.

According to a study published by the USGS, there is a “99% chance” that California will be hit by a major earthquake within the next 30 years…

In a 2008 study, the US Geological Survey found there’s a greater than 99% chance of a 6.7 magnitude quake or larger hitting the California area over the next 30 years. That type of quake along the San Andreas Fault in Southern California could kill an estimated 1,800 people, the study said, injure 53,000 and result in $214 billion in damage. California’s infrastructure could be crippled for weeks, if not months.

Such an event would definitely be catastrophic, but California could definitely recover.

However, if the California coastline were to be hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the devastation would be unlike anything that we have ever seen before in American history.

Not too long ago, the Los Angeles Times published an article that discussed what the damage from a magnitude 8.2 earthquake would look like.  The following is a short excerpt from that article…

Main freeways to Las Vegas and Phoenix that cross the San Andreas fault would be destroyed in this scenario; Interstate 10 crosses the fault in a dozen spots, and Interstate 15 would see the roadway sliced where it crosses the fault, with one part of the roadway shifted from the other by 15 feet, Jones said.

“Those freeways cross the fault, and when the fault moves, they will be destroyed, period,” Jones said. “To be that earthquake, it has to move that fault, and it has to break those roads.”

The aqueducts that bring in 88% of Los Angeles’ water supply and cross the San Andreas fault all could be damaged or destroyed, Jones said.

And remember, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake would be far, far worse than a magnitude 8.2 earthquake.

At the same time all of this shaking has been happening in California, we have also seen very disturbing seismic activity elsewhere on the globe.

For example, just recently a supervolcano in Russia shot hot volcanic ash “six miles into the sky”…

A Siberian super-volcano is worrying scientists after it’s shocking and sudden eruption flung hot ash six miles into the sky. This volcano is one of the most active in Russia.

Scientists working at the geophysical department of the Russian Academy of Science in north-eastern Russia’s Kamchatka Krai region have confirmed the giant eruption took place at the site of the Shiveluch Volcano yesterday over a 20 minute period.  They also verified and saw the volcano spew piping hot ash 10 kilometers (6 miles) into the sky.  So far, no locals or villages have been affected by this volcano’s eruption, but it’s sparking fears that a larger and more powerful explosion could occur in the very near future.

A major eruption of just a single supervolcano anywhere in the world could cast enormous amounts of dust and ash into the atmosphere and cool global temperatures significantly for up to a decade.  If that happened, we would see massive crop failures all over the planet and millions upon millions of people could end up dying from the resulting famine.

With each passing year our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and scientists assure us that absolutely cataclysmic seismic events are in our future.  Now is the time to get prepared, but unfortunately most people aren’t listening to the warnings. (Click to Source)

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The Antichrist’s Arrival Is As Sure As the Rising of the Sun

The Apostle Paul made it clear that one of the most important signs of the last days would be that men would succeed at giving God the boot from all their affairs.

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“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”  – Revelation 13: 1

We have cameras that show us what is behind our cars to help us back up. Cameras are in our house and on the streets. We want to see every detail of every news story, thus we expect news teams to capture every subtle nuance of current events. But who is seeing the bigger picture.

What is happening to our world?

This panoramic is left to the analysts and prognosticators to figure out and we give them no more credence than we give the guy next door with a strong opinion of what it all means.

Political ideologies and religious beliefs seem too diverse and unapproachable to most, so a commonality is sought. Out of this is born political correctness, suspension of moral codes and a general commonality that declares that man will succeed when they have all things in common.

It is the re-birth of the Tower of Babel, but with a modern touch. This time it is going to work.

The only thing lacking in the plan to reduce everything to its least common denominator is a leader, ruler, despot, dictator or father figure to lead us into the well prophesied delusion.

We hear about such a person from the purveyors of Biblical prophecy (eschatologists) and like most things religious, we take it all with the proverbial grain of salt.

But those days are gone. Civilization has turned the corner, now we stand beckoning, for someone who will pull it all together.

He is well on his way.

The man is called the “Antichrist” and his arrival is as sure as the rising of the sun.

He will succeed without firing a shot. He will change the times and the seasons and for a while (7 years) he will coerce all humanity to enter an economic system that promises to lift us all out of poverty, confusion and want. It is a ruse that when fully affianced, will lead to the death of millions.

He is the last Hitler, the great shining hope that leaves the world in a state of hopelessness.

We would rather heed the rules of fools than give credence to the word of the living God. We know that you must never hit seventeen when you play against the black jack dealer, but we don’t mind exposing our entire future, temporal and eternal, to the meanderings of the ignorant, the atheists and doubtful agnostics.

We play our lives like we play a game. We are willing to take a chance that the prophets are wrong, as long as today is not interrupted too much, by the warnings of tomorrow. The odds be damned we say, but it is we that will be damned for our own willful refusal to see the obvious.

The judgment of mankind is coming like a roaring train speeding to its final destination. It is set upon two strong tracks of hardened steel. One track is the refusal to see the promise of and the full nature of the coming ruler.

The other track is the cunning incremental changes that the god of this world (Satan) has laid upon mankind with great subtlety and craft in this last generation. The “Z” generation has been aptly named by the use of the last letter in the English alphabet. He is the end of everything we have known to date.

What can be known about the Antichrist is fully disclosed in scripture.

What can be known about our acceptance of him is made known by the unfolding of our own history.

What Antichrist is and does

Serious Questions and Answers on the Coming of Antichrist

America and The Anti-Christ – America will it submit to the world’s last dictator?

Hitler Was a Choir Boy Compared to the Coming Final Dictator – Who is This Man and is there any way to Identify Him

Antichrist – There’s an App for That: Or There Soon Will Be

The Antichrist comes at a perfectly favorable moment of time

In his new book “Origins,” Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, asserts that God will soon become obsolete and will be replaced completely by the world’s “collective consciousness.” In fact, he has pretty much hit the nail on the head, however, that is what Antichrist uses among other things, to gain full acceptance.

He fully embodies secularisms philosophy. Man will pull himself up by his own bootstraps and he will represent the very best of man in every way.

But secularisms best is about to meet bible prophecy head to head.

The mistake the world makes is to place biblical prophecy in the realm of conjecture, prediction or mere aspiring prognostication. Bible prophecy is a promise made by God of exactly what will happen, it contains no speculation and is not subject to chance.

Brown and those like him will stand at the last day with their jaws dropped and their minds blown. Not one of their stylized meanderings will have a chance at happening and the Antichrist is part of the reason why.

Antichrist has more than military, political and economic savvy; in fact, he is directly connected (possessed) by the god of this present world (Satan) and has all the wisdom of the world at his disposal.

He will look, act and perform in a pleasing and attractive way. The twist comes after be begins to kill and destroy on a level unknown in our entire history. When the pincers are set, the grip cannot be loosened and the world will meet with the full wrath of God at the end of Antichrist’s brief, but tumultuous and deadly rule.

Any student of eschatology (second coming doctrine) can tell us what Antichrist is, but who he is and where he is will be a matter of history, a history that is very near. Most biblical scholars and eschatologist believe that he is alive today and will shortly be revealed to the world.

“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” (2 Thess 2: 8-10 NIV)

In the New International Version of the bible Antichrist is referred to as the “lawless one” but in the KJV version he is called the “wicked one.” Both these terms are legitimately interchangeable because while he is lawless that does not mean that anarchy as we now understand it spreads across the globe. He makes himself the law. And because he is totally wicked his laws allow everything that God has declared sinful as long as he as he alone retains his place as the supreme ruler of the world.

The push toward everything sinful, immoral and wicked is a full generation underway; it is conditioning the world to receive Antichrist with open arms. This is no legend – this is our future.

How the world beckons for him to come

The list of national and worldwide backward trends and full blown apostasies are far too extensive to list in full. Here is a cross section.

What is clear is that there is a sweep or wave of nations that are willing to break every principle and mandate of their own constitutional law along with every known teaching of the bible, Old or New Testament.

  • In America we are still killing un-born babies at the rate of nearly 4000 per day.
  • Hollywood has at last become a waste treatment facility that is operating in reverse dumping Godlessness, porn, violence and idiocy into any media they can get their hands on. And now the full truth about the proverbial “casting couch” is out of the bag.
  • 2017 will be known as the year that statesmanship died in disgrace as congressmen and senators are being charged with groping, indecent exposure and general indecency – and now we find American taxpayers are footing the bill to hush it all up.
  • Drag queens are now reading stories to elementary school children in full regalia.
  • An author has released his new book just in time for Christmas featuring Santa, a black man, married to a white man.
  • France is seeking to lower the sexual age of consent to 13. No this is not a typo – age 13.
  • Almost all of Europe, many in America and every Muslim country in the world still think Palestine was an ancient nation which is now being occupied by Israel. A lie that could be uncovered with about one hour of serious investigation has become the rap for the whole world.
  • Homosexuality and all of the other modern perversions have come into vogue even though there is a tremendous price to pay in poor health, mental breakdown, suicide and judgment from God.
  • Australia is about to vote on same sex marriage because a poll showed that over sixty percent of the Aussies are OK with it.
  • People are happily lining up like dogs to voluntarily receive a chip implant. While they insist the promise that Antichrist will mark or chip them in order to control them, they march blissfully down the road to their own destruction.

The Apostle Paul made it clear that one of the most important signs of the last days would be that men would succeed at giving God the boot from all their affairs. They will not only succeed, but a state of abject reprobation would ensue in equal and direct proportion to their efforts.

Reprobation is a state of “living judgment” which means they have been given up. Worldwide reprobation is the call to Antichrist to take his place in our history. It is the nation’s beckoning to him to lead them in their last hurrah.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” (Ro 1: 28) (Click to Source)

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Have Failed Vaccination Programs Caused the U.S. to Lead All Industrialized Nations in Infant Mortality Rates?

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Natural vs. Artificial Herd Immunity: What Have Failed Vaccination Programs Taught Us?

by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD
Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge

Herd immunity is a concept by which an infectious agent can no longer spread across a population because a sufficiently large percentage of individuals have immunity, either from a history of exposure to the wild-type of the infectious agent, or due to acquired immunity from vaccination with a vaccine designed to protect against the wild-type.

From an individual perspective, herd immunity can afford protection to one who is not immune.

This type of immunity exists within populations to varying degrees depending on the number of individuals who are immune to the infectious agent.

Other factors that influence the spread of pathogens include attributes of the infectious agent, attributes of the vaccine, the route, mode and rate of transmission of the infectious agent, the lethality of the infectious agent, and the diversity of types of the specific pathogen for which immunity is sought.

Regardless of whether immunity is achieved via a vaccine, or via natural infection, the total percentage of individuals who are immune can have an effect of slowing down the rate of spread of infection via natural transmission.

Herd immunity is sought, in part, due to concern over individuals who are immunocompromised because they are more likely to contract a circulating pathogen in a population in which the infectious agent is relatively free to spread. It is generally thought that there is an inverse relationship between the percentage of a population that is immune, and the chance that a person who is not immune will come into contact with an individual who can transmit the virus.

Either through natural immunity or through vaccination, sufficient herd immunity can, in principle, bring the rate of transmission of an infectious agent to zero, with immune individuals collectively acting as a barrier to the spread of the infectious agent, until it “burns out.”

Unless there is a natural reservoir, herd immunity can be a factor that can contribute to the eradication of infectious agents.

In most mainstream descriptions of herd immunity, the contribution of natural immunity is diminished, or not even mentioned, as the individuals are counted as part of the percentage that have been infected.

However, the statistic of interest to epidemiologists tracking the spread of infectious disease is the number of new transmissions, so any individual who has recovered from a previous infection, and who is now immune, most typically does not represent a source of potential new infections.

Individuals who have natural immunity, whether via natural infection, or passive immunity in babies who acquire their mothers’ antibodies, all contribute to a reduction in the rate of occurrence of new transmissions.

Some viruses and bacteria however, are inherently capable of re-infecting, either because they rapidly evolve (such as the cold virus, or the influenza virus), or there are many types (such as HPV), or because they result in a poor or non-specific immune response.

The determination of the benefit of widespread vaccination for any vaccine must consider not only the ability to protect those at risk, but also the downstream costs due to vaccine injuries.

Vaccines: Efficacy and Injury

Efficacy of specific vaccines vary, and thus a difference exists between the rate of vaccination and the rate of immunization.

This difference is one of the reasons why there can be no one fixed rule for percentage of vaccination rate required to achieve sufficient herd immunity.

Other factors include:

  • the incidence of the disease at a given time
  • variation among vaccines in terms of the period of immunity (the period for which a vaccine confers protection against the wild-type)
  • the nature in which vaccination is conducted.

When only an identifiable segment of the population is at risk of acquiring an infection, such as is the case for Hepatitis B, targeted vaccination can be an effective means of control.

The determination of the benefit of widespread vaccination for any vaccine must consider not only the ability to protect those at risk, but also the downstream costs due to vaccine injuries. The calculations used to bring a Hepatitis B full-population (mass vaccination) program forward did not include any explicit determination or estimation of the cost of Hepatitis B vaccination beyond the cost of the vaccine units themselves.

Vaccine injury is a poorly-studied factor that can directly impede the ability of vaccines to contribute to herd immunity.

Obviously, a vaccine that imparts a higher risk of injury than is relayed to the public, either due to weak, poor, or fraudulent vaccine safety science, will cause a manifestation and realization of that risk, which then will be shared across news media outlets (1980s-late 1990s) and, with mainstream media afraid of losing advertising revenue from direct-to-consumer marketing, via social media outlets (late 1990s-present).

For example, widespread vaccine injury reports by thousands of parents including immediate (same or next day) symptoms such as seizures, screaming, head-banging, loss of verbal communication, etc. have contributed to vaccine hesitancy.

This will reduce vaccine uptake, thereby limiting the ability of that vaccine to contribute to herd immunity.

Such has been the case now for many vaccines currently on the CDC vaccination schedule. The cause of the inability of the vaccine to contribute to herd immunity in these cases results from clearly misleading information on the safety of the product, magnifying distrust.

Some vaccines come with warnings that those receiving the vaccine should not go near infants who have not been vaccinated against that infectious agent. This is the case of vaccines against the Bordetella pertussis bacterium, which causes whooping cough (a treatable respiratory disease).

Pertussis is also an interesting infectious agent with respect to the concept of herd immunity. According to the CDC, individuals should be vaccinated two weeks prior to being near a newborn. Consider then this quote from the CDC:

More than 95 percent of U.S. children receive three or more doses of pertussis vaccines, while less than 1 percent are completely unvaccinated. Because of this, we usually find that most pertussis occurs among vaccinated people. This does not mean that the vaccine doesn’t work, it just means that most people are vaccinated but protection wears off.

And yet the herd immunity threshold score (the target percentage) allegedly required to acquire herd immunity is between 88% and 93%. The difficulties in expecting herd immunity with vaccination against B. pertussis were known back in the 1990s (Fine, 1993):

The cyclical pattern of pertussis provides a classic example of mass action dynamics…. Consideration of age-dependent transmission has suggested a slightly lower estimate, 88 percent, assuming no waning of immunity….

Given that these herd immunity estimates are higher than most estimates of the protective efficacy of a complete course of pertussis vaccine… and that there is evidence of waning vaccine-derived protection… it appears that eradication of this infection is not currently possible by childhood vaccination alone.

Vaccination of those most at risk of being infected is considered to be the most efficient use of herd immunity. These strategies are sometimes called “bubble” or “ring” (around an outbreak) and cocoon (around an individual) vaccination.

The CDC recommends cocoon vaccination for infants for pertussis, leading to new vaccination of individuals who will be near the infant shortly after birth with the DTaP/TDap vaccine.

This recommendation persists in spite of the findings of epidemiologists who reported in 2012 that to prevent one infant death, one million parents would have to be vaccinated.

Fear tactics—such as the Glaxo Smith Kline ad featuring a new grandmother, supposedly not recently vaccinated with TDap, turning into a wolf—are used to aggressively promote the cocooning strategy.

Nicola Klein, a pediatrician and vaccine researcher who led a recent Pediatrics study on vaccinations for whooping cough stated,

“I haven’t seen any studies that show a strong protective effect form the cocooning strategy.”

Vaccine Failure

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The vaccination paradigm holds that a specific percentage of vaccinated in a population will bring about herd immunity fails at 95 percent in part because people who are vaccinated lose their immunity.

With acellular pertussis, the immunity is lost fairly quickly; one study in 2005 found that adolescents who were schedule-compliant for pertussis vaccination only had 73% effectiveness within one year of the final booster, and that the effectiveness rate dropped to 34% within two to four years.

Compared to natural immunity, which lasts four to 20 years, the pertussis immunization program cannot be expected to contribute to herd immunity as well as vaccine proponents would have us believe.

Dr. James Cherry, in a commentary accompanying the Acosta et al. study, found the results, which he calls “vaccine failure”, “disappointing” and pointed out that case-control studies tend to inflate efficacy.

He attributes the failure of the TDap and DTaP vaccination program to five factors:

  • waning immune responses
  • a change in the typical immune response in vaccine recipients
  • insufficient antigenicity of the vaccine due to missing proteins that would cause longer immunity as in the natural infection
  • improper formulation of the antigens that are in the vaccines
  • a stronger response of the original vaccine components than to new epitopes in the later vaccine

Vaccines other than the TDap/DTaP have been developed with high efficacy.

Why have these not been brought forward?

Combined vaccines have caused gridlock on improvement in terms of both safety and efficacy, and this gridlock has lead ACIP and CDC to adopt unsafe strategies. Unfortunately, the failure of the proposed ten-year booster TDap program resulted in calls for vaccination with TDap during pregnancy—each pregnancy.

For a vaccine to be administered to pregnant women without adequate safety data is, in my view, nothing short of medical malpractice.

Pertussis vaccination during pregnancy was actually put into policy with zero safety data. The use of TDap during pregnancy was recommended by the CDC in 2013—before, even as they admitted, sufficient safety testing was available.

The subsequent and few vaccine safety studies conducted for TDap during pregnancy focused primarily on maternal outcomes, and have not properly accounted for fetal deaths (e.g., excluding cases of spontaneous abortions).

Maternal immune activation is especially problematic for brain development.

In a review of one study in its recommendation, the CDC reported that fever was observed in 2.4%–6.5% of recipients of a TDap booster (indicating increased risk of neurodevelopmental issues, per maternal immune activation), and while those rates were similar to controls, they noted that,

“Safety data on use of Td during multiple pregnancies have not been published,”

and yet they still recommend TDap in each and every pregnancy.

The use of an absence of evidence as evidence of absence belies an approval bias that reaches outside the realm of science.

And herein we see the same logical fallacy that CDC has been using since 2004 to have vaccines approved.

The use of an absence of evidence as evidence of absence belies an approval bias that reaches outside the realm of science.

In a study earlier this year, Perry et al reported that 3% of women who received TDap during a pregnancy were not likely to accept another TDap during subsequent pregnancies due to responses to the first dose.

However, they also noted that maternal reactions following receipt of TDap are common: two-thirds of the study population had noteworthy negative reactions.

ACIP Wants Three Doses of MMR? What For? 19% Efficacy?

In their anti-trust case against Merck, two whistleblowers have asserted that the actual efficacy of the MMR vaccine against the wild-type mumps virus may be as low as 10%.

ACIP recently recommended a third dose of MMR to help stem the growing number of mumps outbreaks across the country.

For over a decade, mumps outbreaks worldwide have involved—almost exclusively—vaccinated individuals.

In an article reviewing the Merck fraud case, Dr. Paul Offit, MD is quoted as “believing” that all young people should be required to get a third MMR dose before entering college.

This “belief”, like ACIP’s “belief” that TDap would be safe during pregnancy, is not science-based.

Based on Merck “science,” MMR is claimed to have a two-dose “efficacy” of 80-85% (“efficacy” is in quotes because this is for the vaccine strain, not the wild type).

If the whistleblowers’ allegations are correct, under a naïve model in which repeated vaccination increases immunity in the previously vaccinated at the same rate as the unvaccinated (a dubious but best-case scenario), my calculations tell me that the expected population-wide efficacy of MMR against wild-type mumps after three doses is 14.5%.

To achieve the reported immunity (85%), individuals would have to receive a stunning 14 doses of MMR.

If the single-dose efficacy is 68%, four doses are needed to achieve 85% overall efficacy. 

Note that even this falls short of Merck’s goal of 95% efficacy to achieve herd immunity.

Clearly, if TDap/DtaP is a failed vaccine, MMR is an absolute blunder.

Theory vs. Reality

So, what have we learned about herd immunity from admitted failures such as the TDap/DTaP vaccination program and ongoing mumps outbreaks within vaccinated populations?

A meta-analysis in 2015 estimated that assuming 85% efficacy, in every additional year after the last dose of DTaP, the odds of infection increased by 1.33 times and that only 10% of children vaccinated with DTaP would be immune to pertussis 8.5 years after the last dose.

Reviewing last year’s Harvard mumps outbreak and the current outbreak at Syracuse University, nearly all the students diagnosed with mumps had been “properly vaccinated” against mumps with the MMR.

Given that the only solution offered to us from the CDC is more boosters, I would say that we have not moved or improved in artificial immunization—at least against B. pertussis or mumps—in decades.

There are calls for lifelong adult boosters against pertussis to “increase herd protection” as if that is still (or ever was) a viable concept when considering pertussis.

U.S. Leads all Industrialized Nations in Infant Deaths

Crying little baby boy receive vaccine in office

The US leads all industrialized nations in the rates of deaths of infants on the first day of life.

Starting in 2011, there were more fetal deaths than infant deaths in the United States (National Vital Statistics Report, CDC), and the rate of maternal death during pregnancy is skyrocketing, beyond all western countries.

One study in the Lancet reported a rate of 26 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies in the US.

We have also learned that the vaccine industry, including the CDC, will continue to allow society to expend time, energy and resources on demonstrably failed vaccine programs, ambivalent to the risks of adverse events associated with each and every vaccine, and that they will desperately try to move the goal post of performance, or ditch their vaccination efforts onto another unsuspecting segment of the population without sufficient safety testing. (Click to Source)

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