IS THE END NEAR?

Posted on May 13, 2016January 31, 2025 by Ray Joseph Cormier

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. Joel 3:14

Valley of Decision

The New York Times reports these decisions have been taken a long Time ago, when the US unilaterally abrogated nuclear arms limiting Treaties signed with the Soviet Union now that it no longer exists and it views Russia as weak. Absolutely, from the Russian perspective, they would have serious questions about the real US-NATO intentions, despite US soothing words.

In the world of Power, Pulpit and Pew this vision is still True from both the Old and New Testaments:

Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.
For the LORD has poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers has he covered.
And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray you: and he says, I cannot; for it is sealed:
And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray you: and he says, I am not learned.
Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.
Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who sees us? and who knows us? Isaiah 29:9-15

You hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,
This people draws close to me with their mouth, and honours me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Matthew 15:7-9

Russia Calls New U.S. Missile Defense System a ‘Direct Threat’

MOSCOW — As American and allied officials celebrated the opening of a long-awaited missile defense system in Europe with a ribbon cutting and a band, the reaction in Russia on Thursday suggested the system had raised the risks of a nuclear war.

Russian officials reiterated their position that the American-built system imperiled Russia’s security. But the public discussion in Russia was darker, including online commentary of how a nuclear confrontation might play out in Europe, and the prospect that Romania, the system’s host, might be reduced to “smoking ruins.”

“We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters in a conference call.

“Measures are being taken to ensure the necessary level of security for Russia,” he said. “The president himself, let me remind you, has repeatedly asked who the system will work against.”

The United States has asserted that the anti-ballistic missile system would protect only against “rogue” states, particularly Iran, and provide no protection for either Europe or the United States from Russia’s far larger arsenal of nuclear missiles. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization site will be controlled by an American officer.

The system, called Aegis Ashore, was essentially transferred from a seaborne launchpad onto land in Romania, at the Deveselu air base. The United States on Friday planned to break ground on a second site, in Poland, that should be completed in 2018. But a deputy United States defense secretary, Robert Work, reiterated Thursday there are “no plans at all” to strengthen this missile umbrella to protect against Russia.

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Russian defense experts consider the site a threat.

“We still view the destructive actions of the United States and its allies in the area of missile defense as a direct threat to global and regional security,” Ms. Zakharova said.

She said that the Aegis Ashore launchpad was “practically identical” to a system used aboard Aegis warships that is capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles.

While the United States says it has no Tomahawk missiles at the site in Romania, Russian officials say the launchpad violates a 1987 treaty intended to take the superpowers off their hair-trigger nuclear alert, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, by banning land-based cruise and medium-range missiles with a range from 300 to 3,400 miles.

The short flight time of these missiles diminished to mere minutes the window Soviet leaders would have had after a warning to decide whether to launch a second strike, raising the risks of mishaps. Any redeployment of nuclear-capable missiles in Central Europe would roll the clock back to this nerve-racking 1980s status quo.

“We have to announce this openly, without any additional diplomatic formulations,” Ms. Zakharova said of the Russian assertion the site violates the intermediate-range missile ban. “We are talking about violation of this treaty.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has warned that an American antimissile deployment in Eastern Europe could prompt Russia to withdraw from the treaty. The United States last year accused Russia of violating the treaty by failing to declare the true range of two missile types.

Last fall, Russian security officials appeared to drop hints of another military response to the missile defense system — a nuclear-armed drone submarine. Russia, this leak appeared to say, has options.

During a high-level security meeting, a television camera zoomed in on an open binder showing the weapon’s design, ostensibly by accident.

The drone, according to easily decipherable text accompanying the design drawing, would be capable of carrying a large nuclear device into coastal waters and detonating it, touching off a radioactive tsunami to flood and contaminate seaside cities.

The submarine would “defeat important economic objects of an enemy in coastal zones, bringing guaranteed and unacceptable losses on the country’s territory by forming a wide area of radioactive contamination incompatible with conducting military, economic or any other activities there for a long period of time,” it said.

A Russian commentator, Konstantin Bogdanov, wrote on Lenta.ru, a news portal, that the antimissile sites in Eastern Europe might even accelerate the slippery slope to nuclear war in a crisis.

They would inevitably become priority targets in the event of nuclear war, possibly even targets for preventive strikes. Countries like Romania that host American antimissile systems might be the only casualties, he wrote, whereas the United States would then reconcile with Russia “over the smoking ruins of the East European elements of the missile defense system.”

The American spokesman saying this missile defence system is only for an imaginary Middle Eastern Country having nukes and intercontinental missiles count on their own Western populations believing the Corporate owned news media propaganda, being unquestioning and dumb. It’s potentially a grave mistake to think the Russians are that dumb.

The range of these US-NATO Missiles would have to be at the borders of those rogue Middle Eastern Nations, not at the Russian border to be effective against missiles coming from there. The Truth and Reality is, the only Nation in The Middle East with nukes and the missiles with the capability to deliver them is Israel. The UN is not allowed to inspect Israel’s nuclear facilities and nuclear arsenal because it has not signed on to the NPT.

By any stretch of the imagination, it’s perfectly natural I should be following these trends more closely because of this Public record from 40 years ago.

The September 13, 1976 Kansas City Times records the warning of an “idea being put out subtly and deceptively” by the government that we have to get prepared for a war with Russia.”

The Revelation of the unfolding details and events reported by Today’s news media, indicate clearly and expressly, the TIME of the fulfillment of that prophecy is closer now than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and when the US and the Soviet Union were shouting at each other in Public in 1985. Now it is building up surreptitiously, behind the scenes, while the people are asleep or distracted.

The article from The New York Times above is one more confirming sign this world is at the precipice. The article below, with the picture and date, confirms the vision is in harmony with the Day. Kansas City Times, September 13, 1976 (2)

Sunday, May 15

Besides maintaining this Blog and my Public Face Book News Feed, I comment often in The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Post and many other online news outlets. Only CSIS and the NSA would know them all. Having the Time is part of my retirement, approaching my 73rd Year May 21.

I made this comment this morning as it is related to the theme of this article:

From Cover to Cover The Bible is Anti-Empire by Rocket Kirchner

Rocket is a Musician and a Believer, so while I did not include the video appropriate in my mind to the themes, I can do that here between the lines. Enjoy!

Rocket, It’s hard for me to believe 40 years have passed since THE KANSAS CITY TIMES published this on September 13, 1976. It’s almost like being an Elton John Rocket Man on the way to the Revelation of Church of Philadelphia Freedom!

Ancient Babylon is the Bible’s starting model for Imperial Powers, the USA being the late, greatest of them all.

“He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the election in November to do God’s bidding: To tell the world, from Kansas City, this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered […] He gestured toward a gleaming church dome. “The gold dome is the symbol of Babylon,” he said.”

These are the first two parts of the three part Writing On The Wall recorded in Daniel 5 during the Captivity of Babylon some 2600 years ago. It was not until 9/11 and 7 years later, with the Global Financial Meltdown-Economic Pearl Harbor-Tsunami in the Fall of 2008, the whole world was able to see the Writing on the Wall for the 1st Time at the same Time.

The third part of the Writing on the Wall speaks of the decline of the world’s dominant economic-military Imperial Super Power, and a rising Persia/Iran.

The US is the latest, greatest Nation to wear the Biblical Babylonian Imperial Mantle these last 2600 human years. Ancient Babylon was the 1st, and is now known as Iraq. The Tail struck the Head, and the consequences continue to this very Day!

THE KANSAS CITY TIMES also published this in that 1976 article:
He wanted to bring to the public’s attention an idea being put out “subtly and deceptively” by the government that “we have to get prepared for a war with Russia.”

The Revelation of the unfolding events reported by Today’s news media TODAY, indicate the TIME of the fulfillment of that prophecy is now at hand, unless saner heads prevail!

And to the angel of the Church in Philadelphia write; These things say he that is Holy, he that is True, he that has the key of David, he that opens, and no man shuts; and shuts, and no man opens;
I know your works: behold, I have set before you an open door, and no man can shut it: for you have a little strength, and have kept my word, and have not denied my name.
Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you.
Because you have kept the word of my Patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which you have, that no man take your crown.
Him that overcomes will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Revelation 3:7-13

Searching for the right Elton John Philadelphia Freedom video just now, I found this one with the ringing bells, so appropriate for

PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND

posted to this Blog 5 years ago.

REGIME CHANGE

Posted on April 13, 2016March 27, 2024 by Ray Joseph Cormier

The

It is no secret the US believes it is an ‘exceptional Nation.’ The US considers itself the exception to the post-WWII rules that govern the behaviour of other Nations, enabling it to violate International Law with impunity as the world’s late, great Imperial Power.

The UN is located in New York, and the US pays for most of it. The Secretary-General is beholden to the US government. How can he, the UN Security Council or the International Court charge the US with violating International Law or the Principles of the UN Declaration?

General Wesley Clark is a retired 4-star General, and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. For those who haven’t seen it, this is a video of him blowing the whistle in 2007 on the US War Plans brought out just days after 9/11

Republican Bush started the Iraq regime change part of the 2001 US War Plans in 2003 violating International Law, undermining the Global Order in place since the end of WWII, and ushering the Law of the Jungle into the Middle East and the World.

Democrat Obama followed the same 2001 US War Plans 10 years later, when NATO changed the prosperous and stable Gadaffi Regime in Libya for a failed terrorist State. Democrat Obama’s CIA started running Libya’s weapons from their Station in Benghazi, to their favoured terrorist regime change boots on the ground in Syria for the next phase of the 2001 US War Plans.

President Trump is following the same 2001 US War Plan these 16 years later. He recently announced in Saudi Arabia, his Administration’s intention to bring regime change to Iran, the last target in the US War Plans General Clark revealed in 2007.

Republican Bush-Democrat Obama-and now Trump, all following the same 16 year old US War Plans. That’s enough circumstantial evidence to make a thinker think there really is a ‘DEEP STATE’ pulling the strings behind the scenes of the Republican-Democrat Facade?

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS: LIP SERVICE TO PEACE – POLICY & ATTITUDES LEADING TO WAR

Posted on January 13, 2015March 27, 2024 by Ray Joseph Cormier

The following article by Professor Richard Falk is clear, incisive, objective and Righteous.

Richard Falk is an International Law and International Relations Scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. His term as UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Rights recently ended. He is the Jew the Israelis love to hate.

I first learned of his being long before Charlie Hebdo, reading in the news The Secretary-General of the United Nations, The US Ambassador to the UN, and the Canadian Government were calling for him to be fired from his UN position for expressing his Rapporteur’s Freedom of Speech in the framework of his Legal Experience and Knowledge of International Law. Even though I knew nothing about him except his UN title, I instinctively knew if all those powerful people wanted him fired, he must be doing something right, and did some research. I discovered a man with a beautiful mind and soul.

The Irrelevance of Liberal Zionism

Frustrated by Israeli settlement expansion, excessive violence, AIPAC maximalism, Netanyahu’s arrogance, Israel’s defiant disregard of international law, various Jewish responses claim to seek a middle ground. Israel is criticized by this loyal opposition, sometimes harshly, although so is the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and activists around the world. Both sides are deemed responsible in equal measure for the failure to end the conflict. With such a stance liberal Zionists seek to occupy the high moral ground without ceding political relevance. In contrast, those who believe as I do that Israel poses the main obstacle to achieving a sustainable peace are dismissed by liberal Zionists as either obstructive or unrealistic, and at worst, as anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic.

Listen to the funding appeals of J Street or read such columnists in the NY Times as Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman to grasp the approach of liberal Zionism. These views are made to appear reasonable, and even just, by being set off against such maximalist support for Israel as associated with AIPAC and the U.S. Congress, or in the NY Times context by comparison with the more conservative views of David Brooks (whose son currently serves in the IDF) who published a recent ‘balanced’ column lionizing Netanyahu, “The Age of Bibi” [Jan. 2, 2014]. Of all the deformed reasoning contained in the column, perhaps the most scandalous was comparing Netanyahu to Churchill, and to suggest that his story has the grandeur that bears a resemblance to Shakespeare’s MacBeth, an observation that many would find unflattering. Of all Netanyahu’s qualities remarked upon, Brooks astoundingly finds that “his caution is the most fascinating.” According to Brooks, Netanyahu deserves to be regarded as cautious because he has refrained from attacking Iran despite threatening to do so with bellicose rhetoric. I would have thought that Netanyahu’s inflammatory threats directed at Iran, especially as combined with covert acts including inserting viruses to disable its nuclear program and assassinating Iranian scientists, would seem reckless enough for most observers. Since Brooks fails to mention the murderous attacks on Gaza, there is no need to reconcile such aggressive behavior with this overall assessment of caution.

At the core of liberal Zionism is the indictment of the Palestinian leadership for “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity” to recall the self-serving quip of the Israeli diplomat, Abba Eban. Roger Cohen would have us believe that prior to the collapse of the April negotiations the U.S. Government had presented a framework agreement, acceptable to Tel Aviv, that the Palestinian Authority irresponsibly and unreasonably rejected. And not only rejected, but the PA behaved in a manner that was provocative, signed some international agreements as if it already was a state. [“Why Israeli-Palestinian Peace Failed,” Dec. 23, 2014] This spin comes from Netanyahu’s chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, who is presented by Cohen as the voice of moderation, as the self-proclaimed champion of ‘two states for two peoples.’

Livni who is the leader of a small party called Hatnua, which is joined in coalition with a revamped Labor Party headed by Isaac Herzog, contesting Likud and Netanyahu. Cohen never inquires as to what sort of state she would wish upon the Palestinians, which on the basis of her past, would be thoroughly subjugated to Israeli security demands as well as accommodating the bulk of settlements and settlers while rejecting the rights under international law of Palestinians in relations to refugees.

When Livni was asked by Cohen whether she would suspend Israeli settlement expansion so as to get direct negotiations started once more, she indicated that she would “at least outside the major blocs.” Cohen calls her party ‘centrist,’ which is one way of acknowledging how far Israeli politics have drifted to the right in recent years. A reading of the leaked documents of the secret negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel represented by Livni showed how disinterested Israel seemed to be in two states for two peoples at that time of far less extensive settlement encroachment, as well as her overt rejection of the relevance of international law to the diplomatic process. [For a collection of the leaked documents showing Livni’s role see Clayton E. Swisher, ed., Palestine Papers: The End of the Road (2011)]

This expresses a second element of liberal Zionism, that despite everything the two state solution is confirmed over and over again as the only path to peace. As such, it should be endlessly activated in accordance with the Oslo formula that keeps the United States in the absurd role of intermediary and continue to insist that any Palestinian reference to rights under international law is an obstacle to peace. After more than 47 years of occupation and over 20 years of submission to the Oslo approach it would seem that it is past time to issue a certificate of futility, and the failure to do so, is for me a sure sign of either bad faith or extreme denial.

What is baffling is that those like Friedman and Cohen who surely know better play this game that never even raises the concrete question of how to reverse a settlement process that now includes as many as 600,000 settlers many of whom are militantly opposed to any kind of solution to the conflict that challenges their present situation. Conveniently, also, this liberal advocacy finesses the claims of the four million or so Palestinian refugees, including almost two million that have been confined to miserable refugee camps for decades, some since 1948. How can one possibly imagine a sustainable and just peace emerging from such a blinkered outlook!

Liberal Zionists also oppose as irresponsible and unhelpful all efforts to challenge this framework, especially any call for holding Israel to account under international humanitarian law for its excessive violence. Alternative futures based on the equality of the two peoples, such as some kind of living together within a single political community are dismissed out of hand, either because of colliding with Zionist expectations of a Jewish state or because after decades of hatred any effort at social integration would be bound to fail. Intriguingly, my experience of many conversations with both Palestinian refugees and Gazans is far more hopeful about peaceful coexistence within shared political space than are the Israelis despite their prosperity, prowess, and far greater security.

In a similar vein, liberal Zionists almost always oppose as counterproductive, activist initiatives taken under the auspice of the BDS Campaign. Their argument is that Israel will never make ‘painful sacrifices’ when put under pressure deemed hostile, and without these, no peace is possible. What these painful sacrifices might be on the Israeli side are never spelled out, but presumably would include disbanding the isolated settlements and maybe the separation wall, both of which were in any event unlawful. The real sacrifice for Israelis would be to give up the completion of the maximal version of the Zionist project, that of so-called Greater Israel that encompasses the entirety of the alleged biblical entitlement to Palestine. For the Palestinians in contrast their sacrifice would necessitate renouncing a series of entitlements conferred by international law, pertaining to settlements, refugees, borders, self-determination, sovereignty. In effect, Israel would sacrifice part of its unlawful dominion, while Palestine would relinquish its lawful claims, and the end result would be one of the inequality of the two peoples, not a recipe for a lasting peace.

A final feature of liberal Zionism is to make concessions to the Greater Israel outlook along the following lines—Israel should be allowed to control the unlawfully established settlement blocs; Israeli security concerns should be met, including by stationing military forces within the West Bank for many ears, while any Palestinian security concerns are treated as irrelevant; Palestinian refugees would be denied the right to return to their pre-1967 places of residence; Jerusalem would remain essentially under Israel’s control; no provision would be made to ensure non-discrimination against the 20% Palestine minority living within pre-1967 Israel; no acknowledgement would be made of the past injustices flowing from the 1948 dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their place of residence and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people, the nakba, nor the recognition that the nakba is a process that has continued to afflict Palestinians to this very moment.

Despite its claim of reasonableness and practicality, the liberal Zionist approach is an increasingly irrelevant presence on the Israeli political horizon, paralleling the decline of the Labor Party and the peace movement in the country, as well as the ascendancy of the Likud and the politics of the extreme right. The Israeli end game is now overwhelmingly based on unilateralism, either imposing a highly subordinated and circumscribed Palestinian state confined to parts of the West Bank or establishing Greater Israel and giving up any pretense of implementing the formula of two states for two peoples. The fact that liberal Zionism and the diplomacy of the West largely plays along with the discarded scenario of two states for two peoples is nothing more than subservience to a cruel variant of ‘the politics of delusion.’

The denigration of liberal Zionism is not meant to belittle the effort of Jews as Jews to find a just and sustainable solution for both peoples. I strongly support such organizations as Jewish Voices for Peace and Middle East Children’s Alliance, and hail the contributions of Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe, and many others to the struggle for Palestinian empowerment and emancipation.

Fortunately, Palestinian resistance will likely stymie the two variants of the Israeli end game mentioned above, but much suffering is almost certain to ensue before sufficient momentum builds within Israel and throughout the world for living together on the basis of equality and even solidarity, accompanied by the necessary acknowledgement of past injustices via some kind of truth commission mechanism. After such knowledge, anything will be possible!