- Every ten years since 1635, the small alpine town of Oberammergau, Germany has produced a six-hour Passion Play memorializing the final hours of Jesus Christ. About half the town's citizens help produce the play. Amateur actors fill the stage. The citizens are fulfilling their ancestors' 375-year-old vow to God to produce the play every decade since He delivered them from the bubonic plague.
- Over the past two decades, the town has been the stage for a different kind of passion play. Few places in the world more perfectly present the drama of Jewish power and aggressive intent to deny public expressions of Christianity.
- For the past two decades, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League-ever-ready to stifle any virile expression of Christianity-has taken its editing scissors to the play's script. Jewish crimes have been expunged. Today, the Jews play a bleached and sanitized role in the death of Christ. (What did Jesus say of the Pharisees? Whitewashed tombs?) Romans now stand guard outside Jesus' first entrance to Jerusalem, "making it clear who is really in control." The Jewish high priests debate theology, many siding for Jesus. The infamous blood oath-"His blood be upon us and our children"-has been axed from the script. Even Judas, incredibly, is pure at heart. He wants "to facilitate dialogue with the priesthood and is duped into betraying Jesus. It is one of the best roles in the play. When Judas understands that he has been manipulated, he storms the Temple, demanding Jesus' release." ADL even wrote in a new scene in which Jesus stands outside the Temple, holds up a Torah scroll and leads His followers in reciting in Hebrew " the major Jewish prayer known as "Sh'ma Yisroel" "Hear O Israel, the Lord is God the Lord is One.""
- AJ Goldman in
- Yet for ADL, even the censoring and trashing has not been enough. Its
- For Foxman, t
- Jewish leaders, captained by Foxman, have been radically successful in their assault. In Oberammergau, the gospel has been stripped. Its testimony is unspeakable in public. A 375-year-old religious tradition-vowed by a city, to thank God for deliverance-has been knifed of its content. (What happened to the sovereignty of old culture? What happened to the sanctity of traditions?) Nothing could more clearly state unbelieving Jewry's intent to make the New Testament itself unspeakable, unacceptableillegal.
- And still, it is not enough. This year the
- This is about the Bible, plain and simple. The original passion play was lifted from the pages of the Christian Scriptures. The text was taken to the stage. Germans simply dramatized the Pharisees' vengeful, unrelenting persecution from the book of John; Judas' ugly, searing betrayal which Matthew witnessed; the Jewish masses' homicidal contempt, retold by Mark; the agony of Christ, gut-wrenchingly recorded by Luke. History proves what happened. After Jesus' return to the Father, Christians were persecuted relentlessly. The Jewish Talmud, to this day, records Christ as an evil bastard, now in hell, writhing in boiling semen. (Gittin 56b-57a)
- What happened is really not debatable. But it is unacceptable to speak. Anti-Christian Jews can be blamed for nothing. Their leaders must be portrayed as always wise, balanced, good and moderate. As a people, they were never xenophobic or legalistic. And they had nothing, nothing, to do with Jesus' death. The nails went through His hands and feet as if by magic. There was no murder.
- Isn't it interesting? Jewish leaders allow others no such exoneration.
- In Germany, there is no such convenient bleaching of history. A radically different situation prevails. There, no one can be free from their ancestral guilt. No reparations can be enough. It is actually illegal to deny German blood guilt, their culture of hate, their cries through complicity of "Gas them! Gas them!" Under Germany's Holocaust denial laws, only Jews may revise German history (as in Oberammergau). A person who even questions the Holocaust can go to prison. It is illegal to deny the intentional, mechanized murder of six million Jews. It is illegal even to question the methods used by the Nazis. In Germany, the streets themselves are painted with the memories. Black tulips are grown in memorial sites. Every year on Holocaust Memorial Day the whole of Europe grieves for its guilt and vows it will never be repeated. A timeline of some of the billions spent on Holocaust memorials can be seen here:
- History, we know, is written by the conquerors. There can be no remaining doubt about Jewish power in the western world today. Jewish leaders are the scripters of history and Christians are silent and cowed, submitting our sacred Gospels and traditions to Jewish scissors as if they mean nothing.
- The world would look vastly different if this weren't true-if Jews enjoyed less power, if they mourned or even admitted what they did to Jesus and then to Christians. Picture it.
- If Jerusalem were Germany, there would be monuments on every corner. In the concrete graven words would say, "This is where Jewish crowds jeered Christ up the streetThis is where Jews cried, "Crucify Him." Plaques and columns would stand between black tulips to announce, "This is where Steven was stoned because he was a Christ-followerLet us never forgetNever againNever again."
- If such awareness were alive in the world-if Christians themselves were vigilant to Jewish antagonism, to the cosmic conflict-perhaps hate crime laws would not have passed. Perhaps we would not be so far down the road to criminalizing Christianity. That day is coming fast, largely because Christians meekly submit to Jewish leaders' powerful agenda, always defended by the myth of Jewish innocence and victimhood against the ever-present and irrational "anti-Semitism" of Christians and Gentiles. We have submitted to this myth. We have refused to expose the Talmud. Also ADL. We have surrendered the Gospels to Jewish excising. We have signed contracts when entering Israel, promising not to evangelize. We have underwritten the Jewish state with tax donations and religious offerings. We have lionized the Jewish tradition. We have drunk the Kool-Aid. Even before Jewish activists took scissors to the crucifixion stories, we ourselves used White-out on the words of Christ.
- We ignored His timeless warnings,
- Be careful, be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matthew 16:6)
- Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are (Matthew 23)
- We ignored Paul,
- Beware of the concision [the Jews].... For we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit(Philippians 3:2-3)
- The problem is that it can't be had both ways. Stand behind the Bible or don't. Accept its warnings-all of them-or admit you are an unbeliever.
- Evangelical Christians hold to Biblical literalism yet ignore its most vibrantly relevant truths when they reflect adversely on Judaism. The Bible explains why Oberammergau has been butchered. It explains why Germany is lined with blood yet Jerusalem can continue, without censure, its vendetta against Christianity. Yet Christian leaders themselves need no coaching to ignore these verses.
- Unless they stop this willful blindness, Jewish power will continue to grow and someday soon the Bible itself will be replaced-like the Oberammergau script-with the tradition of those who nailed Jesus to the cross.
- ~~~~~~~~~~~
- Harmony Daws is a staff writer and researcher for the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization. Rev. Ted Pike is the director of the National Prayer Network.
- TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this subject. Call (503) 631-3808.
- The freedom-saving outreach of Rev. Ted Pike and the National Prayer Network is solely supported by sale of books, videos and your financial support. All gifts are tax-deductible.
- NATIONAL PRAYER NETWORK, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015
Saturday, June 5, 2010
ADL Rewrites New Testament
WHO overstated H1N1 threat
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A joint report into the handling of the H1N1 outbreak has found that some scientists who advised governments to stockpile drugs, had previously been on the payroll of big drug companies.
A joint report into the handling of the H1N1 outbreak has found that some scientists who advised governments to stockpile drugs, had previously been on the payroll of big drug companies.
The report, published in the British Medical Journal, found World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines on the use of medicine to treat the virus were prepared by experts who had received consulting fees from the top two manufacturers of the drugs - Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.
The WHO's decision to name the flu a "pandemic" is also coming under scrutiny from European investigators, and stands accused of exaggerating the dangers of the H1N1 outbreak, which emerged in April last year.
Laboratory tests have confirmed more than 18,000 deaths from H1N1 infection, according to WHO figures, but the virus has turned out to be less deadly than feared.
Also, symptoms suffered by most people infected with the virus have been mild.
'Exaggerated scare story'
A report by the Council of Europe, also released on Friday, accused the WHO of a lack of transparency over the pandemic announcement - saying it wasted huge sums of money and provoked "unjustified fears".
Paul Flynn, the author of the report, told Al Jazeera that the WHO warnings were "exaggeration on stilts".
"The WHO changed the definition of the most serious pandemic for one that would include the possibility of a tremendous amount of deaths to one that wouldn't include that severity ... and this is extraordinary.
"[The] announcement caused the world press to go into hysteria and tell people that we're going to see a plague like the 1918 one.
"There was never any scientific evidence to justify this exaggerated scare story.
"They frightened the world witless about this and caused this vast expense and disruption of health services," he said.
'Saving lives'
But Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said the organisation does not believe any undue influence was exerted on its work.
"In April 2009, we knew very little about [this new virus] and our duty was a duty of care to save lives," he told Al Jazeera.
"So we were helping member states prepare for outcomes that were unknown at the time. We were lucky that afterwards the virus showed itself to be much milder than it was initially thought it could have been.
"Remember what would have happened had WHO and the world done nothing, and it turned out to be a virus on the scale of mortality of bird flu."
The WHO initially urged rapid development of treatments and vaccines, fearing the virus had the potential to kill millions.
As a result wealthy countries spent billions on medicines which many believe are now unnecessary.
Across Europe, governments are now trying to resell their stockpiles of swine flu vaccine.
Emergency committee
An emergency committee of the WHO has been waiting for signs of how the virus is developing in the southern hemisphere winter before making a full pronouncement on its state.
 |
| WHO have confirmed more than 18,000 deaths from H1N1 infection [GALLO/GETTY] |
The committee, composed of 15 external advisers, believes it is critical for countries to maintain vigilance concerning the pandemic, including necessary public-health measures for disease control and surveillance, Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, has said in a statement.
Chan said that pandemic flu activity was expected to continue, and the committee would meet again by mid-July to review the status of the outbreak once more data from the winter influenza season in the southern hemisphere was available.
The panel met on Tuesday, but Chan delayed any announcement until Thursday as the committee, whose members were spread around the world for the meeting by teleconference, put the final touches to the wording of their recommendation.
Chan's decision, based on the committee's recommendation, means that the outbreak, widely known as swine flu, remains at phase six on the WHO's pandemic scale, which has been at the top level of six since June 2009.
'Profound misjudment'
WHO experts say the virus remains a threat to some vulnerable people, notably pregnant women, young children and those with respiratory problems, and such groups would continue to need vaccinations.
Fiona Godlee, the editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), told Al Jazeera the findings were "not surprising" but that the public should be "shocked by this".
"This was a major decision that affected governments around the world, vast sums of public money and private profit, and we need to really understand exactly the extent to which WHO's advice was influenced by the pharmaceutical industry," she said.
"The investigation by the BMJ suggests that there was substantial influence at a number of key stages in the declaration of the pandemic, the definition of the pandemic, the triggering of vaccine contracts around the world and advice to government to stockpile large numbers of expensive antiviral drugs.
"The extent of misjudgment was really very profound in this case."
But WHO experts maintain that the HIN1 virus could spread easily among people if it were to mutate into a more dangerous or lethal form.
The virus is currently most active in parts of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, and activity in Africa is low or sporadic.
Lawyers Claim Google Wi-Fi Sniffing ‘Is Not an Accident’
Lawyers suing Google claimed Thursday they have discovered evidence in a patent application that Google deliberately programmed its Street View cars to collect private data from open Wi-Fi networks, despite claims to the contrary.
“At this point, it is our belief that it is not an accident,” said Brooks Cooper, an Oregon attorney suing Google in one of several class actions lawsuits around the country arising from Google’s disclosure that its Street View cars intercepted Wi-Fi traffic around the world. Google has described the sniffing as a coding error.
The evidence, the relevance of which Google disputed Thursday, is a 2008 Google patent application (.pdf) describing a method to increase the accuracy of location-based services — services that would allow advertisers or others to know almost the exact location of a mobile phone or other computing device. The patent application involves intercepting data and analyzing the timing of transmission as part of the method for pinpointing user locations.
The so-called “776″ patent application, published by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January, describes “one or more of the methods” by which Google collects information for its Street View program, Cooper’s legal team said in court documents filed late Wednesday in federal court in Oregon.
Google spokeswoman Christine Chen said in an e-mail that the patent in question “is entirely unrelated to the software code used to collect Wi-Fi information with Street View cars.” In a follow up e-mail, Chen added that Google files “patent applications on a variety of ideas that our engineers come up with. Some of them mature into real products or services, and some of them don’t.”
Chen did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking whether Google has performed the “776″ method in practice.
Whether Google willfully sniffed out internet traffic on unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots in dozens of countries is an enormous public relations headache. It also carries huge legal and monetary ramifications in the United States, where the Mountain View, California, internet giant is being sued for privacy violations in multiple federal courthouses.
Among other reasons, Google might escape liability if it accidentally collected and never divulged the data, which includes web pages users visited or pieces of e-mail, video, audio and document files.
Google must turn over the U.S. data it siphoned to a federal judge in Oregon by Friday. The data will remain under lock and key.
Street View is part of Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides panoramic pictures of streets and their surroundings across the globe.
The internet giant has maintained the collection of data was inadvertent –- the result of a programming error with code written for an early experimental project that wound up on the Street View code. Google said it didn’t realize it was sniffing packets of data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks in dozens of countries for the last three years, until German privacy authorities began questioning what data Google’s Street View cameras were collecting.
21 Miles Off The Coast of Palestine
Here is a strange echo from history.
It is a documentary made by the BBC in 1973 about the story of the ship, the Exodus.
It was the ship full of Jewish refugees - many of them survivors of the Holocaust - that tried to break the British blockade of Palestine in 1947. The participants from both sides appear and describe in detail how British soldiers boarded the ship 21 miles off the coast of Palestine killing 3 of the refugees and wounding others.
It caused an international scandal and was a PR disaster for the British government. It is seen in Israel today as one of the most significant events that led to the founding of the modern Israeli state.
The shock was compounded when the British took most of the refugees back to Germany and put them on trains and sent them to internment camps.
Here is a still of the ship after it was captured by the British.
It is full of all the central characters in the story - including the captain of the Exodus, and the commander of the British warship. He uses little models of ships to demonstrate how he came alongside and British soldiers jumped from special platforms onto the roof of the Exodus - and took over the wheelhouse.
For some unknown reason the film starts in colour - then goes to black and white and finally comes back into colour. I'm sorry about this - but it is fascinating.
Caught in the oil
A short entry - AP Photographer Charlie Riedel just filed the following images of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana's East Grand Terre Island. As BP engineers continue their efforts to cap the underwater flow of oil, landfall is becoming more frequent, and the effects more evident. (8 photos total)
Report condemns swine flu experts' ties to big pharma
Trio of scientists who urged stockpiling had previously been paid, says report
Scientists who drew up the key World Health Organisation guidelines advising governments to stockpile drugs in the event of a flu pandemic had previously been paid by drug companies which stood to profit, according to a report out today.
An investigation by the British Medical Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the not-for-profit reporting unit, shows that WHO guidance issued in 2004 was authored by three scientists who had previously received payment for other work from Roche, which makes Tamiflu, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), manufacturer of Relenza.
City analysts say that pharmaceutical companies banked more than $7bn (£4.8bn) as governments stockpiled drugs. The issue of transparency has risen to the forefront of public health debate after dramatic predictions last year about a swine flu pandemic did not come true.
Some countries, notably Poland, declined to join the panic-buying of vaccines and antivirals triggered when the WHO declared the swine flu outbreak a pandemic a year ago this week. The UK, which warned that 65,000 could die as a result of the virus, spent an estimated £1bn stockpiling drugs and vaccines; officials are now attempting to unpick expensive drug contracts.
The cabinet office has launched an inquiry into the cost to the taxpayer of the panic-buying of drugs.
Today, the Council of Europe, produces a damning report into how a lack of openness around "decision making" has bedevilled planning for pandemics.
"The tentacles of drug company influence are in all levels in the decision-making process," said Paul Flynn, the Labour MP who sits on the council's health committee. "It must be right that the WHO is transparent because there has been distortion of priorities of public health services all over Europe, waste of huge sums of public money and provocation of unjustified fear."
Although the experts consulted made no secret of industry ties in other settings, declaring them in research papers and at universities, the WHO itself did not publicly disclose any of these in its seminal 2004 guidance. In its note, the WHO advised: "Countries that are considering the use of antivirals as part of their pandemic response will need to stockpile in advance."
Many nations would adopt this guidance, including Britain. In 2005, the government said it had begun bulk-buying the drug Tamiflu, initially ordering 14.6m doses after bird flu killed 40 in Asia.
The specific guidance on antivirals was written by Professor Fred Hayden. He has confirmed in an email that he was being paid by Roche for lectures and consultancy work at the time the guidance was produced and published. He received payments from GSK for consultancy and lecturing until 2002. He said "[declaration of interest] forms were filled out for the 2002 consultation".
The previous year Hayden was also one of the main authors of a Roche-sponsored study that asserted what was to become a main Tamiflu selling point – its claim of a 60% reduction in flu hospitalisations.
Dr Arnold Monto was the author of the WHO annex dealing with vaccine usage in pandemics. Between 2000 and 2004, and at the time of writing the annex, Monto had openly declared consultancy fees and research support from Roche and GSK. No conflict of interest statement was included in the annex published by the WHO.
When asked if he had signed a declaration of interest form for WHO, Dr Monto said "conflict of interest forms are requested before participation in any WHO meeting".
The third scientist, Professor Karl Nicholson, is credited with the WHO's influential work Pandemic Influenza. According to declarations he made in the BMJ and Lancet in 2003, he had received sponsorship from GSK and Roche.
Even though the previous year these declarations had been openly made, no conflict of interest statement was included in the annex. Nicholson said he last had "financial relations" with Roche in 2001.
When asked if he had signed a declaration of interest form for WHO, he replied: "The WHO does require attendees of meetings, such as those held in 2002 and 2004, to complete declarations of interest."
A WHO official told the BMJ it had to balance an individual's privacy with the robustness of guidelines, which were subject to a wide external review process.
Swiss take next step to end bank secrecy
Switzerland moved a step closer to ending its centuries-old laws which have protected the secrecy of the country's banks on Thursday after a key parliamentary vote.
The upper house of the Swiss parliament ratified an agreement made by the Swiss government to hand over the names of thousands of UBS clients to the US.
The vote is seen as a major step forward in the US taxman's attempts to get his hands on the names of 4,450 of UBS's American clients as part of a wider investigation into tax avoidance.
However, in a separate vote, the lower house of the Swiss parliament – the Federal Assembly - will next week have to approve the Swiss-US deal, signed in August 2009 as part of a deal to drop tax evasion charges against the Swiss bank.
As part of that deal, the names of approximately 250 of the wealthiest people on UBS's US offshore client list have already been handed over. August 19, 2010 is the deadline for the remaining names under the agreement signed with the Internal Revenue Service and the US Department of Justice.
Prior to the deal, the US was accusing UBS of assisting wealthy Americans in hiding almost $20bn (£13.7bn) of assets in offshore accounts. As part of the settlement, UBS paid a fine of $780m in order to avoid criminal charges.
The upper house of the Swiss parliament ratified an agreement made by the Swiss government to hand over the names of thousands of UBS clients to the US.
The vote is seen as a major step forward in the US taxman's attempts to get his hands on the names of 4,450 of UBS's American clients as part of a wider investigation into tax avoidance.
However, in a separate vote, the lower house of the Swiss parliament – the Federal Assembly - will next week have to approve the Swiss-US deal, signed in August 2009 as part of a deal to drop tax evasion charges against the Swiss bank.
As part of that deal, the names of approximately 250 of the wealthiest people on UBS's US offshore client list have already been handed over. August 19, 2010 is the deadline for the remaining names under the agreement signed with the Internal Revenue Service and the US Department of Justice.
Prior to the deal, the US was accusing UBS of assisting wealthy Americans in hiding almost $20bn (£13.7bn) of assets in offshore accounts. As part of the settlement, UBS paid a fine of $780m in order to avoid criminal charges.
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