The Tunnel People That Live Under The Streets Of America

We have report a similar story a year ago....I guess things are much better now!!!
http://nunezreport.blogspot.com/2012/02/some-of-things-americans-are-doing-just.html

Did you know that there are thousands upon thousands of homeless people that are living underground beneath the streets of major U.S. cities?  It is happening in Las Vegas, it is happening in New York City and it is even happening in Kansas City.  As the economy crumbles, poverty in the United States isabsolutely exploding and so is homelessness.  In addition to the thousands of "tunnel people" living under the streets of America, there are also thousands that are living in tent cities, there are tens of thousands that are living in their vehicles and there are more than a million public school children that do not have a home to go back to at night.  The federal government tells us that the recession "is over" and that "things are getting better", and yet poverty and homelessness in this country continue to rise with no end in sight.  So what in the world are things going to look like when the next economic crisis hits?

When I heard that there were homeless people living in a network of underground tunnels beneath the streets of Kansas City, I was absolutely stunned.  I have relatives that live in that area.  I never thought of Kansas City as one of the more troubled cities in the United States.

But according to the Daily Mail, police recently discovered a network of tunnels under the city that people had been living in...

Below the streets of Kansas City, there are deep underground tunnels where a group of vagrant homeless people lived in camps.

These so-called homeless camps have now been uncovered by the Kansas City Police, who then evicted the residents because of the unsafe environment.

Authorities said these people were living in squalor, with piles of garbage and dirty diapers left around wooded areas.

The saddest part is the fact that authorities found dirty diapers in the areas near these tunnels.  That must mean that babies were being raised in that kind of an environment.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing is happening all over the nation.  In recent years, the tunnel people of Las Vegas have received quite a bit of publicity all over the world.  It has been estimated that more than 1,000 people live in the massive network of flood tunnels under the city...

Deep beneath Vegas’s glittering lights lies a sinister labyrinth inhabited by poisonous spiders and a man nicknamed The Troll who wields an iron bar. 

But astonishingly, the 200 miles of flood tunnels are also home to 1,000 people who eke out a living in the strip’s dark underbelly.

Some, like Steven and his girlfriend Kathryn, have furnished their home with considerable care - their 400sq ft 'bungalow' boasts a double bed, a wardrobe and even a bookshelf.

Could you imagine living like that?  Sadly, for an increasing number of Americans a "normal lifestyle" is no longer an option.  Either they have to go to the homeless shelters or they have to try to eke out an existence on their own any way that they can.

In New York City, authorities are constantly trying to root out the people that live in the tunnels under the city and yet they never seem to be able to find them all.  The following is from a New York Post article about the "Mole People" that live underneath New York City...

The homeless people who live down here are called Mole People. They do not, as many believe, exist in a separate, organized underground society. It's more of a solitary existence and loose-knit community of secretive, hard-luck individuals.

The New York Post followed one homeless man known as "John Travolta" on a tour through the underground world.  What they discovered was a world that is very much different from what most New Yorkers experience...

In the tunnels, their world is one of malt liquor, tight spaces, schizophrenic neighbors, hunger and spells of heat and cold. Travolta and the others eat fairly well, living on a regimented schedule of restaurant leftovers, dumped each night at different times around the neighborhood above his foreboding home.

Even as the Dow hits record high after record high, poverty in New York City continues to rise at a very frightening pace.  Incredibly, the number of homeless people sleeping in the homeless shelters of New York City has increased by a whopping 19 percent over the past year.

In many of our major cities, the homeless shelters are already at maximum capacity and are absolutely packed night after night.  Large numbers of homeless people are often left to fend for themselves.

That is one reason why we have seen the rise of so many tent cities.

Yes, the tent cities are still there, they just aren't getting as much attention these days because they do not fit in with the "economic recovery" narrative that the mainstream media is currently pushing.

In fact, many of the tent cities are larger than ever.  For example, you can check out a Reuters video about a growing tent city in New Jersey that was posted on YouTube at the end of March right here.  A lot of these tent cities have now become permanent fixtures, and unfortunately they will probably become much larger when the next major economic crisis strikes.

But perhaps the saddest part of all of this is the massive number of children that are suffering night after night.

For the first time ever, more than a million public school children in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percentsince the 2006-2007 school year.

So if things are really "getting better", then why in the world do we have more than a million public school children without homes?

These days a lot of families that have lost their homes have ended up living in their vehicles.  The following is an excerpt from a 60 Minutes interview with one family that is living in their truck...

This is the home of the Metzger family. Arielle,15. Her brother Austin, 13. Their mother died when they were very young. Their dad, Tom, is a carpenter. And, he's been looking for work ever since Florida's construction industry collapsed. When foreclosure took their house, he bought the truck on Craigslist with his last thousand dollars. Tom's a little camera shy - thought we ought to talk to the kids - and it didn't take long to see why.

Pelley: How long have you been living in this truck?

Arielle Metzger: About five months.

Pelley: What's that like?

Arielle Metzger: It's an adventure.

Austin Metzger: That's how we see it.

Pelley: When kids at school ask you where you live, what do you tell 'em?

Austin Metzger: When they see the truck they ask me if I live in it, and when I hesitate they kinda realize. And they say they won't tell anybody.

Arielle Metzger: Yeah it's not really that much an embarrassment. I mean, it's only life. You do what you need to do, right?

But after watching a news report or reading something on the Internet about these people we rapidly forget about them because they are not a part of "our world".

Another place where a lot of poor people end up is in prison.  In aprevious article, I detailed how the prison population in the United States has been booming in recent years.  If you can believe it, the United States now has approximately 25 percent of the entire global prison population even though it only has about 5 percent of the total global population.

And these days it is not just violent criminals that get thrown into prison.  If you lose your job and get behind on your bills, you could be thrown into prison as well.  The following is from a recent CBS News article...

Roughly a third of U.S. states today jail people for not paying off their debts, from court-related fines and fees to credit card and car loans, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Such practices contravene a 1983 United States Supreme Court ruling that they violate the Constitutions's Equal Protection Clause.

Some states apply "poverty penalties," such as late fees, payment plan fees and interest, when people are unable to pay all their debts at once. Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee, for instance, while Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge on the original debt. Some Florida counties also use so-called collection courts, where debtors can be jailed but have no right to a public defender. In North Carolina, people are charged for using a public defender, so poor defendants who can't afford such costs may be forced to forgo legal counsel.

The high rates of unemployment and government fiscal shortfalls that followed the housing crash have increased the use of debtors' prisons, as states look for ways to replenish their coffers. Said Chettiar, "It's like drawing blood from a stone. States are trying to increase their revenue on the backs of the poor."

If you are poor, the United States can be an incredibly cold and cruel place.  Mercy and compassion are in very short supply.

The middle class continues to shrink and poverty continues to grow with each passing year.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately one out of every six Americans is now living in poverty.  And if you throw in those that are considered to be "near poverty", that number becomes much larger.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either "poor" or "low income".

For many more facts about the rapid increase of poverty in this country, please see my previous article entitled "21 Statistics About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Everyone Should Know".

But even as poverty grows, it seems like the hearts of those that still do have money are getting colder.  Just check out what happened recently at a grocery store that was in the process of closing down in Augusta, Georgia...

Residents filled the parking lot with bags and baskets hoping to get some of the baby food, canned goods, noodles and other non-perishables. But a local church never came to pick up the food, as the storeowner prior to the eviction said they had arranged. By the time the people showed up for the food, what was left inside the premises—as with any eviction—came into the ownership of the property holder, SunTrust Bank.

The bank ordered the food to be loaded into dumpsters and hauled to a landfill instead of distributed. The people that gathered had to be restrained by police as they saw perfectly good food destroyed. Local Sheriff Richard Roundtree told the news “a potential for a riot was extremely high.”

Can you imagine watching that happen?

But of course handouts and charity are only temporary solutions.  What the poor in this country really need are jobs, and unfortunately there has not been a jobs recovery in the United States since the recession ended.

In fact, the employment crisis looks like it is starting to take another turn for the worse.  The number of layoffs in the month of March was 30 percent higher than the same time a year ago.

Meanwhile, small businesses are indicating that hiring is about to slow down significantly.  According to a recent survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, small businesses in the United States are extremely pessimistic right now.  The following is what Goldman Sachs had to say about this survey...

Components of the survey were consistent with the decline in headline optimism, as the net percent of respondents planning to hire fell to 0% (from +4%), those expecting higher sales fell to -4% (from +1%), and those reporting that it is a good time to expand ticked down to +4% (from +5%). The net percent of respondents expecting the economy to improve was unchanged at -28%, a very depressed level. However, on the positive side, +25% of respondents plan increased capital spending [ZH: With Alcoa CapEx spending at a 2 year low]. Small business owners continue to place poor sales, taxes, and red tape at the top of their list of business problems, as they have for the past several years.

So why aren't our politicians doing anything to fix this?

For example, why in the world don't they stop millions of our jobs from being sent out of the country?

Well, the truth is that they don't think we have a problem.  In fact, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson recently said that U.S. trade deficits "don't matter".

He apparently does not seem alarmed that more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities have been shut down in the United States since 2001.

And since the last election, the White House has seemed to have gone into permanent party mode.

On Tuesday, another extravagant party will be held at the White House.  It is being called "In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul", and it is going to include some of the biggest names in the music industry...

As the White House has previously announced, Justin Timberlake (who will be making his White House debut), Al Green, Ben Harper, Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, Joshua Ledet, Sam Moore, Charlie Musselwhite, Mavis Staples, and others will be performing at the exclusive event.

And so who will be paying for all of this?

You and I will be.  Even as the Obamas cry about all of the other "spending cuts" that are happening, they continue to blow millions of taxpayer dollars on wildly extravagant parties and vacations.

Overall, U.S. taxpayers will spend well over a billion dollars on the Obamas this year.

I wonder what the tunnel people that live under the streets of America think about that.

Arizona passes law making gold and silver legal tender

States are now rushing to push bills through allowing for gold and silver to be recognized as legal tender as politicians fear that the U.S. economy is going to collapse.

The push from states like Arizona, which passed through their House of Representatives on Monday allowing gold and silver to be considered legal tender, comes as conservatives fear that the Federal Reserve is running the country's economy into a deep hole.

Lawmakers say the global economy is on the precipice of financial ruin and the U.S. dollar could soon be worth less than the paper used to make it.

These doomsayers are pushing forward legislation that would declare privately minted gold and silver coins legal tender, no different under state law than the U.S. dollar printed by the federal Department of Treasury.

Arizona is one of more than a dozen states to incorporate similar laws into their roster, as many conservatives are harboring a growing distrust in government-backed money.

'This is the type of currency we have had over the history of mankind,' Republican state Representative Steve Smith said of the Arizona law.

In 2011, Utah became the first state in the country to legalize gold and silver coins as currency.

Lawmakers in Minnesota, North Carolina, Idaho, South Carolina, Colorado and other states have debated similar laws in recent years.

Many investors have invested their money in precious metals in recent years as a hedge against the declining value of the dollar.

When the value of the dollar declines, gold prices rise.

Gold rose $12, nearly 1 per cent, to $1,604.60 per ounce on Monday with news of Europe's bailout plan for cash-strapped Cyprus. Silver inched slightly higher, up 2.3 cents to $28.874 per ounce.

The dollar was up against the euro, the currency used by 17 European countries, as well as the Japanese yen and the Canadian dollar in February.

The Arizona bill, which advanced in a 4-2 vote by a House committee Monday, states that gold and silver should be legal currency not subject to tax or regulation as property.

The Republican-led Senate gave the bill its blessing in February in a 17-11 partisan vote.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306590/Arizona-make-gold-silver-legal-tender-join-growing-number-states-distrust-government-money.html#ixzz2Q4N4Y7kp

Mysterious Stone Structure Discovered Beneath Sea of Galilee

A giant "monumental" stone structure discovered beneath the waters of the Sea of Galilee in Israel has archaeologists puzzled as to its purpose and even how long ago it was built.

The mysterious structure is cone shaped, made of "unhewn basalt cobbles and boulders," and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons the researchers said. That makes it heavier than most modern-day warships.

Rising nearly 32 feet (10 meters) high, it has a diameter of about 230 feet (70 meters). To put that in perspective, the outer stone circle of Stonehenge has a diameter just half that with its tallest stones not reaching that height.

It appears to be a giant cairn, rocks piled on top of each other. Structures like this are known from elsewhere in the world and are sometimes used to mark burials. Researchers do not know if the newly discovered structure was used for this purpose.

The structure was first detected in the summer of 2003 during a sonar survey of the southwest portion of the sea. Divers have since been down to investigate, they write in the latest issue of theInternational Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

"Close inspection by scuba diving revealed that the structure is made of basalt boulders up to 1 m (3.2 feet) long with no apparent construction pattern," the researchers write in their journal article. "The boulders have natural faces with no signs of cutting or chiselling. Similarly, we did not find any sign of arrangement or walls that delineate this structure."

They say it is definitely human-made and probably was built on land, only later to be covered by the Sea of Galilee as the water level rose. "The shape and composition of the submerged structure does not resemble any natural feature. We therefore conclude that it is man-made and might be termed a cairn," the researchers write.

More than 4,000 years old?

Underwater archaeological excavation is needed so scientists can find associated artifacts and determine the structure's date and purpose, the researchers said.

Researcher Yitzhak Paz, of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ben-Gurion University, believes it could date back more than 4,000 years. "The more logical possibility is that it belongs to the third millennium B.C., because there are other megalithic phenomena [from that time] that are found close by," Paz told LiveScience in an interview, noting that those sites are associated with fortified settlements.

The researchers list several examples of megalithic structures found close to the Sea of Galilee that are more than 4,000 years-old. One example is the monumental site of Khirbet Beteiha, located some 19 miles (30 kilometers) north-east of the submerged stone structure, the researchers write. It "comprises three concentric stone circles, the largest of which is 56 m [184 feet] in diameter."

An ancient city

If the third-millennium B.C. date idea proves correct it would put the structure about a mile to the north of a city that researchers call "Bet Yerah" or "Khirbet Kerak."

During the third millennium B.C. the city was one of the biggest sites in the region, Paz said. "It's the most powerful and fortified town in this region and, as a matter of fact, in the whole of Israel."

Archaeologist Raphael Greenberg describes it in a chapter of the book "Daily Life, Materiality, and Complexity in Early Urban Communities of the Southern Levant" (Eisenbrauns, 2011) as being a heavily fortified 74-acre (30 hectares) site with up to 5,000 inhabitants.

With paved streets and towering defenses its people were clearly well organized. "They also indicate the existence of some kind of municipal authority able to maintain public structures ..." Greenberg writes.

The research team says that, like the leaders of Bet Yerah, whoever built the newly discovered Sea of Galilee structure needed sophisticated organization and planning skills to construct it. The "effort invested in such an enterprise is indicative of a complex, well-organized society, with planning skills and economic ability," they write in their journal paper.

Paz added that "in order to build such a structure a lot of working hours were required" in an organized community effort.

You only think you know what's coming...EXO-VATICANA (Part No21)

To say some of our sanctified speculations have been confirmed given the election of Pope Francis I is an understatement. 

Pope Benedict XVI’s February 11, 2013 announcement—as forecast in our book Petrus Romanus—was unprecedented because the last pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415, nearly six hundred years ago. We did not venture this hypothesis uninformed. In his book, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times, when asked if he thought it appropriate for a pope to retire, Pope Benedict XVI responded, “If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.”^[i] Thus, based on a conflation of prophecy and current events we went out on a limb, taking a risky position on pages 57–58 of this volume by asserting that Benedict XVI would step down for reasons related to health concerns. Indeed, it came to pass and many former skeptics picked up Petrus Romanus in earnest.

As the reader may be aware, we correlated Pope Benedict’s predisposition to retire with the work of the Jesuit scholar, René Thibaut, who predicted over 60 years ago that the door would be opened for the arrival of the final pope on Malachy’s list in 2012. Of course, the year 2012 came and went with seemingly no fulfillment. Consequently, we were a little disappointed when it seemed like Thibaut was mistaken. All the same, Thibaut’s code-breaking work is a relatively small portion of our book’s content, so we never felt our work was made irrelevant. As it turns out, however, Thiabut was far more correct—astoundingly so—than anyone would ever imagine until February 2013! According to the New York Times:

That the resignation [by Benedict XVI] was long in the planning was confirmed by Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor of the Vatican newspaper,L’Osservatore Romano, who wrote on Monday that the pope’s decision “was taken many months ago,” after his trip to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012, “and kept with a reserve that no one could violate.”^[ii]

In other words, Pope Benedict officially and secretly resigned right when Thibaut—and we—speculated he would in 2012, and then his February 11, 2013 public affirmation was quickly punctuated by a dramatic lightning bolt striking St. Peter’s basilica.^[iii] Whether one agrees with his theology or not, credit must be given where it is due. Thibaut accurately predicted this changing of the guard over sixty years prior. Pope Benedict’s South American tour was ongoing as the first edition of our book went to print and it is now evident that he decided to step down simultaneous with its release exactly when the Belgian Jesuit said he would—sixty years prior. This is also evidenced by the fact that renovations to a property hosting Benedict’s retirement home ensued in 2012 as well.^[iv] Thus, with two living Pontificus Maximi, we have entered into terra incognitaas far as the modern papacy is concerned. This brings us to the new pope.

According to the prophecy of St. Malachy, Peter the Roman has arrived. Pope Francis, formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, has assumed the 112^th position on Malachy’s famous list. While shallow skeptics were quick to point out that “his name is not Peter,” their complaint betrays ignorance of the way the Malachy prophecy works. We have stated from the beginning that the title “Peter the Roman” was symbolic. All popes claim apostolic succession from Peter and, for this reason, it is called the Petrineoffice. They claim to sit on the chair of St. Peter and in this way all popes are Peters. For instance, in an interview with World Net Daily prior to the Pope Francis election, Tom Horn was quoted thus:

Regardless, Horn said he’s always maintained that it doesn’t take someone whose Christian name is Peter to fulfill the prophecy. “In fact, if any Italian is elected, that would be a fairly transparent fulfillment,” he said. Moreover, he argued, “in a very general sense, every pope could be regarded as ‘Peter the Roman,’ and in that sense, this could be the last one.”^[v]

Real scholars who studied the Malachy prophecy down through time unanimously came to a similar conclusion—that the title Petrus Romanus (“Peter the Roman”) was symbolic and not indicative of a birth name any more than Gloria Olivae (the 111^th line in the prophecy of the popes, the one for Pope Benedict XVI) was Cardinal Ratzinger’s given name before he became Pope Benedict XVI, naming himself after the founder of the Benedictine Order, of which the Olivetans are one branch in order to fulfill his place in the prophecy. Over sixty years ago, Thibaut similarly rejected the possibility of a pope literally named Peter and wrote that the name symbolized the totality of the papacy:

We therefore reject the Roman appointed Peter as the impossible Peter II. There is only one Peter, the first of the Roman pontiffs, and he is seen in his many successors. He still to serve is the final as in the first persecution. We believe Petrus Romanus represents all the Roman Pontiffs from St. Peter to the recipient Gloria Olivae.^[vi]

In Thibaut’s reckoning, the meaning of "Petrus" is that all the ambitions and pretensions of the papal dynasty are now encompassed in one man, Pope Francis. This was our position as well, but we were more than a little astounded recently whenthe Archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica, Cardinal Angelo Comastri acknowledged how Petrus Romanus is incarnate in Pope Francis. In discussing details of the new Pope’s April 1, 2013 visit to St. Peter’s tomb in the necropolis under the basilica, Comastri said:

We then made a second stop before the funerary stele of a man called Istatilio. He was certainly Christian: on his grave is the monogram [chi-rho] of Christ. On the stele is inscribed: ‘He was at peace with everyone and never caused strife.’ The Pope, after reading the phrase, looked at us and said, ‘That is a beautiful program of life.’ Climbing back up the stairs and having reached the Clementine Chapel, Pope Francis became absorbed in prayer and repeated with a loud voice the three professions of Peter: “Lord, You are the Christ, Son of the Living God”; “Lord, to whom do we go? You have the words of eternal life”; “Lord, You know all things! You know that I love you!” At that moment, we had the distinct impression that the life of Peter rose out of centuries past and became present and living in the current Successor of the Apostle Peter.[http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=17490]

In addition to this incredible fulfillment of the Malachy prophecy, many scholars of various schools of thought see Bible prophecy in general near its climax. In fact, events in Israel also fell in place just as the first edition of the book Petrus Romanusforecast a year prior. In chapter 16, “The Burdensome Stone,” we wrote about an obscure, under-the-table deal concerning the Hall of the Last Supper on Mount Zion, and it seems that deal has been consummated. Reporter Shlomo Cesana broke the story in the Israel Hayom newsletter on January 30, 2013:

A historical agreement has been signed between Israel and the Vatican, ending a 20 year dispute. Israel has granted the pope an official seat in the room where the Last Supper is believed to have taken place, on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.^[vii]

Even though it is being ignored by the mainstream media, this is momentous because end-time prophecy plays out in Jerusalem and now, for the first time since the reformation of Israel in 1948, the Roman Pontiff has an official seat on Mount Zion. Watch for Pope Francis to visit Israel more than once and pay attention to the details. Accordingly, Hal Lindsey agrees with us that exegesis of Revelation 13:11–18 implies the final pope is likely the false prophet:

The Apostle John in the Book of the Revelation describes very plainly how the leader of the world religious system (based in Rome) will pave the way for the rise of the man who will be the Antichrist. Unfortunately for that churchman, the Antichrist and the False Prophet will later turn on him and destroy the religious system and the city.^[viii]

Another interesting and possibly noteworthy aspect of the Final Pope is the timing of his arrival. While we don’t normally put a lot of stock in numerology, mystics do and the great biblical scholar and Anglican theologian, Ethelbert W. Bullinger, wrote an exhaustive treatise in the nineteenth century which has yielded some interesting connections to the new pontiff. The numbers surrounding Pope Francis’ election keep coming upthirteen. White smoke at 7:06 p.m.: 7 + 6 = 13; he is 76 years old: 7 + 6 = 13; he was elected on the calendar date 3/13/13, which sports two thirteens of its own; 3/13/2013 also yields 3 + 1 + 3 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 3 = 13; he was announced at precisely 8:13 p.m. Vatican time, or, in military and European time 20:13, making for an astounding 3/13/2013 at 20:13. According to Bullinger:

As to the significance of thirteen, all are aware that it has come down to us as a number of ill-omen. Many superstitions cluster around it, and various explanations are current concerning them.

Unfortunately, those who go backwards to find a reason seldom go back far enough. The popular explanations do not, so far as we are aware, go further back than the Apostles. But we must go back to the first occurrence of the numberthirteen in order to discover the key to its significance. It occurs first in Genesis 14:4, where we read “Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and the thirteenth year they REBELLED.”

Hence every occurrence of the numberthirteen, and likewise of every multiple of it, stamps that with which it stands in connection withrebellion, apostasy, defection, corruption,disintegration, revolution, or some kindred idea.^[ix]

This ill omen suggests the apostasy prophesied by Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:3) and the many Revelation judgments along with the “many tribulations” and destruction of Rome predicted by the Malachy prophecy. Bullinger goes on to cite these remarkably suggestive numerical concurrences:

θηρίον (theerion), beast = 247 (13x19)

“He had two horns” = 1521 (13²x9)

“And he had two horns like a lamb” = 2704 (13²x16)

Revelation 13:11, The whole verse = 6318 (13x486)^[x]

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon” (Revelation 13:11). Indeed this second beast—the false prophet—is predicted to be viewed “like a lamb” and the accolades afforded the new pontiff on 3/13/2013 at 20:13 support that notion. As Protestants, we feel well within our rights to assert all claimants to Pontifex Maximus Vicar of Christ as false prophets.^[xi] Please do not be fooled by the media’s unwitting accolades concerning Pope Francis’ feigned humility, this man believes he is literally Christ on Earth, or he would not accept the title of Vicar of Christ. All the same, if the predictions of St. Malachy are truly at their fruition, then the second beast, the one from the Earth called the “false prophet” (Revelation 16:13; 19:20; 20:10) may well be Pope Francis in the role of Petrus Romanus who, unwittingly or not, will lead the world to worship the dragon. Interestingly, his namesake St. Francis of Assisi would agree.

The Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has chosen Francis as his papal name, a first in tribute to Francis of Assisi. It is noteworthy that St. Francis of Assisi’s long Italian name is Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone, a title that can accurately be viewed as “Peter the Roman” from the final line in the Prophecy of the Popes. Since the phrase that supplanted the birth name Giovanni is Francesco di Pietro, and that by sainthood, it is safe to say that by choosing Francis of Assisi’s name, he in effect chose Francesco di Pietro, and he is unlikely to prefer truncation of the Pietro element since Catholicism esteems Peter (Petrus) as the rock of the church and spuriously maintains he was the first pope. Rome was an empire and a city so Bergoglio’s Italian ancestry arguably meets the Roman aspect in a similar way. Accordingly, many argue that Bergoglio has fulfilled the Peter the Roman title with his choice of papal name.

As the 2013 conclave concluded, Bergoglio said he chose the original papal name Francis after St. Francis of Assisi when Cardinal Claudio Hummes exhorted him to “remember the poor.”^[xii] The reader might recall that our book Petrus Romanusconnected the friar Assisi with Petrus Romanus over a year ago now, quoting an apocalyptic prediction he made soon after St. Malachy’s prophecy concerning a Final Pope:

At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error and death… Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it…for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.^[xiii]

Was there something non-canonic about the election of Pope Francis? For starters, Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement makes for an unprecedented situation. When a pope is elected, the Church expects that he will remain in office until his death. Before now, only five popes unambiguously resigned with historical certainty, all between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Arguably, that makes Bergoglio’s election suspect but, apparently, not a violation of canon law. In 1294, Celestine V issued a decree declaring it permissible for a pope to resign, and then resigned himself after only five months as pope. He lived a few more years as a hermit and then as a prisoner of his tyrannical successor, Boniface VIII. Because his decree was never repealed, canon law experts allow that a pope can resign, albeit it is discouraged. Others have objected that the fifteen-day rule between the vacancy of the office and the start of the conclave was circumvented in order to speed up the process. This was done by Pope Benedict’s final decree but the urgency to seat his successor seems suspicious. While Pope Francis represents many firsts, overall, the most interesting aspect is his status as the first ever Jesuit pope.

The sitting pontiff’s background has great prophetic significance as the Jesuit order was formed to specifically combat the Protestant reformation and assert papal supremacy over the entire world. According to a historian, “The Jesuits were the soldiers of the pope: they knew no law but the will of their general, no mode of worship but the pope’s dictate no church but themselves.”^[xiv] Because of this, the Jesuit order was suppressed and disbanded for its pernicious skullduggery by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, and by the mid-eighteenth century, the Jesuits had earned a bad reputation in Europe for political maneuvering and economic exploitation bar-none. The order was reinstated in the early nineteenth century with the mission to conquer by scholarship and infiltration of the education system. Interestingly, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the Jesuit order in 2008, encouraging them to reinvigorate the fourth vow. He said, “For this very reason I have invited you and also invite you today to reflect in order to rediscover the fullest meaning of your characteristic ‘fourth vow’ of obedience to the Successor of Peter.”^[xv]

Church historians record that the fourth vow of obedience is one of “absolute subservience to the pope; to do whatever he enjoined, and go on any service he wished, and into any quarter of the globe.”^[xvi] A few ex-Jesuit whistle-blowers have called this a blood oath involving pagan rites which were laid bare in the suppressed document, “Jesuit Extreme Oath of Induction,” which was once recorded in records of the US Congress, but was suspiciously expunged. According to this document, they are indoctrinated into the principle of Iustum, Necar, Reges, Impious, meaning, “It is just to exterminate or annihilate impious or heretical Kings, Governments, or Rulers.”^[xvii] The Jesuit modernists of today prefer more subtle methods like infiltrating the education system and promoting biblical higher criticism that undermines biblical authority.

           Protestants and Catholics have written about a clandestine war that has been playing out for some time behind the scenes between the papacy and the Jesuit order. We will speculate in the next entry what this could mean between Pope Francis Romanus . . . and the coming of an alien savior.

Raidersnewsupdate.com

Fed Desperately Concerned About the Dollar-Paul Craig Roberts

OBAMA SENDS CONGRESS $3.8 TRILLION SPENDING PLAN

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is sending Congress a $3.8 trillion spending blueprint that seeks to achieve an elusive "grand bargain" to tame runaway deficits by raising taxes further on the wealthy and trimming popular benefit programs such as Social Security.

The president's proposal being unveiled Wednesday includes an additional $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, bringing total deficit savings to $4.3 trillion, based on the administration's calculations.

It projects that the deficit for the 2014 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, would fall to $744 billion. That would be the lowest gap between spending and revenue since 2008.

But instead of moving Congress nearer a grand bargain, Obama's proposals so far have managed to anger both Republicans, who are upset by higher taxes, and Democrats upset with cuts to Social Security benefits.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., rejected the administration's argument that the refusal of Republicans to consider further tax increases represented inflexibility.

"We Republicans have already done things to move to the middle, to find common ground," Ryan said on MSNBC. "We really believe if we set the stage right, we can get fundamental tax reform."

The president's spending and tax plan is two months late. The administration blames the delay on the lengthy "fiscal cliff" negotiations at the end of December and then fights over the March 1 automatic spending cuts.

The president's plan tracks an offer he made to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, during December's budget negotiations, which Boehner ended up walking away from because of his opposition to higher taxes on the wealthy.

The Obama budget proposal will join competing budget outlines already approved by the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-run Senate.

Obama's plan is not all about budget cuts. It also includes an additional $50 billion to fund infrastructure investments, including $40 billion in a "Fix It First" effort to provide immediate investments to repair highways, bridges, transit systems and airports nationwide.

Obama's budget would also provide $1 billion to launch a network of 15 manufacturing innovation institutes across the country, and it earmarks funding to support high-speed rail projects.

The president also is proposing establishment of program to offer preschool to all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families, with the money to support the effort coming from increased taxes on tobacco products.

The administration said its proposals to increase spending would not increase the deficit but rather are paid for either by increasing taxes or making deeper cuts to other programs.

Among the proposed cuts, the administration wants to trim defense spending by an additional $100 billion and domestic programs by an extra $100 billion over the next decade.

The budget proposes cutting $400 billion from Medicare and other health care programs over a decade. The cuts would come in a variety of ways, including negotiating better prescription drug prices and asking wealthy seniors to pay more.

It would obtain an additional $200 billion in savings by scaling back farm subsidies and trimming federal retiree programs.

The most sweeping proposal in Obama's budget is a switch in the way the government calculates the annual cost-of-living adjustments for the millions of recipients of Social Security and other government benefit programs. The current method of measuring increases in the consumer price index would be modified to track a process known as chained CPI.

The new method takes into account changes that occur when people substitute goods rising in price with less expensive products. It results in slightly lower annual reading for inflation.

The switch in the inflation formula would cut spending on government benefit programs by $130 billion over 10 years, although the administration said it planned to protect the most vulnerable, including the very elderly. The change would also raise about $100 billion in higher taxes because the current CPI formula is used to adjust tax brackets each year. A lower inflation measure would mean more money taxed at higher rates.

In the tax area, Obama would raise an additional $580 billion by restricting deductions for the top 2 percent of family incomes. The budget would also implement the "Buffett Rule" requiring that households with incomes of more than $1 million pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. Charitable giving would be excluded.

Congress and the administration have already secured $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years through budget reductions and with the end-of-year tax increase on the rich. Obama's plan would bring that total to $4.3 trillion over 10 years.

It is unlikely that Congress will get down to serious budget negotiations until this summer, when the government once again will be confronted with the need to raise the government's borrowing limit or face the prospect of a first-ever default on U.S. debt.

As part of the administration's effort to win over Republicans, Obama will have a private dinner at the White House with about a dozen GOP senators Wednesday night. The budget is expected to be a primary topic, along with proposed legislation dealing with gun control and immigration.

Early indications are that the budget negotiations will be intense. Republicans have been adamant in their rejection of higher taxes, arguing that the $600 billion increase on top earners that was part of the late December agreement to prevent the government from going over the "fiscal cliff" were all the new revenue they will tolerate.

The administration maintains that Obama's proposal is balanced with the proper mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

Obama has presided over four straight years of annual deficits totaling more than $1 trillion, reflecting in part the lost revenue during a deep recession and the government's efforts to get the economy going again and stabilize the financial system.

The Obama budget's $1.8 trillion in new deficit cuts would take the place of the automatic $1.2 trillion in reductions required by a 2011 budget deal. That provision triggered $85 billion in automatic cuts for the current budget year, and those reductions, known as a "sequester," would not be affected by Obama's new budget.

The budget plan already passed by the GOP-controlled House would cut deficits by a total $4.6 trillion over 10 years on top of the $1.2 trillion called for in the 2011 deal. The budget outline approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate tracks more closely to the Obama proposal, although it does not include changes to the cost-of-living formula for Social Security.




The Associated Press

US Senate to vote on gun control on Thursday

The US Senate is set to hold a crunch vote on Thursday on whether to debate a gun control law, as a conservative blockade of the bill began to splinter.

Majority Leader Harry Reid said it was unclear if they could get the 60 votes needed to overcome a procedural stalling tactic known as a filibuster.

But at least seven Republicans said they would back a debate of the bill.

President Barack Obama has been campaigning for gun controls since a massacre at a school in Connecticut.

Thursday's vote is not about passing the bill, but simply to decide whether it should even be allowed to the Senate floor for debate.'Responsibility to kids'

The legislation would expand the existing system of background checks on gun buyers, make gun trafficking a federal crime and set aside $40m (£26m) of federal funding for enhanced school security.

"We're going to vote on this anyway," Mr Reid said. "The American people deserve a vote on this legislation."

People should listen to what we have to say and move the debate forward ”Mark BardenNewtown victim's parent

A ban on assault weapons and limits on the size of ammunition magazines was dropped from the bill amid a lack of political support.

Mr Reid has said he will organise a vote on those measures as amendments to the main bill, although they are viewed as legislative long shots.

Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Mr Reid added: "We have a responsibility to safeguard these little kids. And unless we do something more than what's the law today, we have failed."

On Tuesday, Republican Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and John McCain of Arizona indicated they would support bringing the legislation to the floor of the chamber.

Tom Coburn said: "There's not very much ambivalence on Capitol Hill about the gun issue. You're on one side or the other, so there's no reason not to go ahead and vote."

But 13 Republican senators said they would use a filibuster to block the attempt to bring the bill up for debate.

In a letter to Mr Reid on Monday, they said the bill infringed the US Constitution's second amendment right to bear arms.

Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, joined the move for a filibuster.

BBC

North Korea is urging all foreign companies and tourists in South Korea to evacuate

North Korea is urging all foreign companies and tourists in South Korea to evacuate or find out where they can take shelter because it says the rival Koreas are on the eve of a nuclear war. The new threat appeared to be an attempt to keep the region on tenterhooks over its intentions.

Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea's 1.2 million-man army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one.

The U.S. embassy in Seoul tells CBS News its security status is unchanged, despite Tuesday's warning. It says it's not telling Americans to evacuate, and Secretary of State John Kerry is still scheduled to visit Friday, reports CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan.

Still, North Korea's earlier warning that it won't be able to guarantee the safety of foreign diplomats after April 10 has raised fears that it will conduct a missile or nuclear test on Wednesday, resulting in U.S. retaliation. South Korea's military has reported missile movements on North Korea's east coast but nothing pointed toward South Korea.

But, as Brennan reports, North Korea has not filed the customary Notice to Airmen - a procedure it usually takes before a test - leading to further uncertainty about whether they will follow through on their threats.

The United States and South Korea have raised their defense postures, and so has Japan, which deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors in key locations around Tokyo on Tuesday as a precaution against possible North Korean ballistic missile tests.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the south Korean puppet warmongers and their moves for a war against" the North, said a statement by the North Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, an organization that deals with regional matters.


The statement is similar to past threats that analysts call an attempt to raise anxiety in foreign capitals. Observers say a torrent of North Korean prophecies of doom and efforts to raise war hysteria are partly to boost the image of young and relatively untested leader Kim Jong Un at home, and to show him as a decisive military leader.

Another reason could be to use threats of war to win Pyongyang-friendly policy changes in Seoul and Washington.

Also Tuesday, a factory complex that is North Korea's last major economic link with the South was a virtual ghost town after Pyongyang suspended its operations and recalled all 53,000 of its workers in more of its recent war-like posturing.

The work stoppage at the Kaesong industrial complex, the biggest employer in the North's third-biggest city and a source of much-needed hard currency, shows that Pyongyang is willing to hurt its own shaky economy in order to display its anger with South Korea and the United States.


Only a few hundred South Korean managers remained at the facility, which has been run for the past decade with cheap North Korean labor and South Korean capital and know-how. The managers have not been forced to leave the complex, located just north of the Demilitarized Zone.

One manager said he and his colleagues are subsisting on instant noodles but planned to stay and watch over company equipment as long as their food lasted. Some of those who chose to leave were seen departing in cars overloaded with finished products.

The Kaesong complex is the last symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement projects from previous eras of cooperation. Other projects, such as reunions of families separated by war and tours of a scenic North Korean mountain stopped in recent years.


Tourists continued to arrive in Pyongyang despite the war hysteria.

Mark Fahey of Sydney, Australia, said he was not concerned about a possible war.

"I knew that when I arrived here it would probably be very different to the way it was being reported in the media," he told The Associated Press at Pyongyang airport. He said his family trusts him to make the right judgment but "my colleagues at work think I am crazy."

Chu Kang Jin, a Pyongyang resident, said everything is calm in the city.

"Everyone, including me, is determined to turn out as one to fight for national reunification ... if the enemies spark a war," he said, in a typically nationalist rhetoric that most North Koreans use while speaking to the media.

In Seoul, Presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing told reporters that the North Korean warning amounted to "psychological warfare."

"We know that foreigners residing in South Korea as well as our nationals are unfazed," she said.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who has sought to re-engage North Korea with dialogue and aid since taking office in February, expressed exasperation Tuesday with what she called the "endless vicious cycle" of Seoul answering Pyongyang's hostile behavior with compromise, only to get more hostility.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday described the tensions as "very dangerous," and said that any small incident caused by miscalculation may "create an uncontrollable situation."

CBS