www.skegley.blogspot.com The Blog of Sam Kegley.
Many of my posts to this site are forwarded from trusted friends or family which I acknowledge by their first Name and last initial. I do not intend to release their contact info.
Welcome
Welcome to my blog http://www.skegley.blogspot.com/ . CAVEAT LECTOR- Let the reader beware. This is a Christian Conservative blog. It is not meant to offend anyone. Please feel free to ignore this blog, but also feel free to browse and comment on my posts! You may also scroll down to respond to any post.
For Christian American readers of this blog:
I wish to incite all Christians to rise up and take back the United States of America with all of God's manifold blessings. We want the free allowance of the Bible and prayers allowed again in schools, halls of justice, and all governing bodies. We don't seek a theocracy until Jesus returns to earth because all men are weak and power corrupts the very best of them. We want to be a kinder and gentler people without slavery or condescension to any.
The world seems to be in a time of discontent among the populace. Christians should not fear. God is Love, shown best through Jesus Christ. God is still in control. All Glory to our Creator and to our God!
A favorite quote from my good friend, Jack Plymale, which I appreciate:
"Wars are planned by old men,in council rooms apart. They plan for greater armament, they map the battle chart, but: where sightless eyes stare out, beyond life's vanished joys, I've noticed,somehow, all the dead and mamed are hardly more than boys(Grantland Rice per our mutual friend, Sarah Rapp)."
Thanks Jack!
I must admit that I do not check authenticity of my posts. If anyone can tell me of a non-biased arbitrator, I will attempt to do so more regularly. I know of no such arbitrator for the internet.
I AGREE WITH THIS FROM BILLY GRAHAM--GOD BLESS OUR COUNTRY AND GUIDE US--
at 95 yrs. old--BILLY GRAHAM
At the Pearly Gates there will be a special crowd to welcome him. His prayer is on point as Mr.Graham always is, It's from a man the media has never been able to throw dirt on.....amazing!
THIS MAN SURE HAS A GOOD VIEW OF WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY......
.
Billy Graham's Prayer For Our Nation'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.
We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.
We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from sin and set us free. Amen!'
With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we once again can be called 'One nation under God!'
Think about this: If you forward this prayer to everyone on your e-mail list, in less than 30 days it would be heard by the world. (It's worth a try!)
If any further evidence was needed to show that the nuclear talks with Iran were a tragic farce, choreographed and orchestrated by Iran, the startling revelations from a former top aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ought to do the trick.
“The US negotiating team are mainly [in Lausanne] to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he told an opposition television network in London.
Amir Hossein Motaghi was Rouhani’s image-maker during the 2013 presidential elections, the man in charge of promoting Rouhani to the nation’s youth through a vigorous social media campaign. Thanks in large part to his efforts, Rouhani captured an overwhelming majority of the youth vote and beat his nearest opponent by more than 30 points.
A journalist by trade, Motaghi says he traveled to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks for the Iranian Student Correspondents Association (ISCA), but then quit his job and applied for political asylum.
That makes him the most recent defector from the upper reaches of Iran’s political establishment to flee the regime and seek refuge in the West.
In his interview with the opposition Iran-e Farda television in London, reported by the Daily Telegraph, Motaghi accused the regime of sending intelligence officers posing as journalists to the talks “to make sure that all the news fed back to Iran goes through their channels.
“My conscience would not allow me to carry out my profession in this manner any more,” he added.
But his revelation about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team is the real shocker. It should wipe away any shred of credibility left to a process that has aimed from the start at helping Iran to slip the deadly noose of the international economic and financial sanctions that have crippled its economy and exacerbated social unrest.
Essentially, what Motaghi said is that Secretary Kerry is working as an agent of Iran and has been arm-twisting reluctant allies, such as the French, into accepting what they know is a bad deal.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, for example, has long been insisting that Iran come clean on its previous military activities, something we are now told that the American delegation, led by Secretary Kerry, wants to leave out of the negotiation. Why? Because the Iranians have said they will not come clean.
That was too much even for the normally pro-Democrat Washington Post, which wrote in a column attributed to its Editorial Board last Friday that the deal was “a reward for Iran’s noncompliance.”
Some Iranian-Americans believe that Secretary Kerry should have recused himself from the negotiations at the very outset because of his long-standing relationship to his Iranian counter-part, Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The two first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse, according to a 2012 book by Hooman Majd, who frequently translates for Iranian officials.
Iranian-American sources in Los Angeles tell me that Javad Zarif’s son was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed, an Iranian-American medical doctor.
The newlyweds went to Iran shortly after their wedding to met Nahed’s family. Kerry ultimately revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State. But the subject never came up in his Senate confirmation hearing, either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were too polite to bring it up.
John Kerry has long advocated nuclear negotiations with Iran. During his 2004 presidential bid, he said that if he were President, he would have “offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel” to Iran, to “test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.”
He also has a long track record of taking money from Iranian-Americans connected to Tehran or lobbying to get U.S. sanctions on Iran removed, Tehran’s prime objective for many years, a subject I have chronicled repeatedly.
But Kerry wasn’t the only person not officially part of the Iranian delegation who was carrying Tehran’s water in Lausanne.
Also showing up was Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), hobnobbing with Western reporters while striding into meetings side by side with the Iranian delegation.
The irony of a Swedish-Iranian running an Iranian-American lobbying organization then showing up in Lausanne to play “let’s make a deal” was not lost on the Iranian American community.
For many years Parsi and NIAC tried to disguise their lobbying efforts on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At one point, they sued an Iranian journalist, Hassan Dai, who openly labeled them the “Iranian lobby” in Washington – only to lose the case, with a U.S. court ordering NIAC to pay damages of over $100,000.
“Now it seems that after losing the court case, NIAC is no longer trying to hide its cozy relationship with IRI and openly communicates with the regime,” Dr. Iman Foroutan, a California entrepreneur and Chairman of The New Iran, a pro-freedom forum, told me.
“Those Iranian American members of NIAC that until now have not been aware of NIAC’s direct relationship with the tyrannical regime in Iran will now have to make a choice of remaining a member of or cancelling their membership with NIAC,” Dr. Foroutan said.
While Parsi’s relationship to Tehran officials angers Iranian-Americans, Secretary of State John Kerry’s lobbying his fellow foreign ministers to accept Iranian negotiating positions – if true – should make Americans livid.
That is, if anyone is still paying attention to the facts.
* Don't miss Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield on The Glazov Gang discuss Why Obama is Making it Easy for Iran to Get the Bomb (starts at 14:35 mark).
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Even with all that's been published about WWI, it's still hard to appreciate the enormity of the damage and casualties which occurred during that conflict.
The Real “No-Go Zone” of France: A Forbidden No Man’s Land of Poison
When you imagine France and its scenic countryside, you might think of the picturesque villages, vineyards a plenty and endless rolling green hills to drive through on a blissful summer road trip. But there’s one corner of this scenic country that no one has been allowed to enter for nearly a century, known as the “Zone Rouge” (the red zone).
Pictured above is an artist’s impression of the forsaken territory, originally covering more than 1,200 square kilometres (460 sq miles) in the years following the Great War. Today, around 100km2 (roughly the size of Paris), is still strictly prohibited by law from public entry and agricultural use because of an impossible amount of human remains and unexploded chemical munitions yet to be recovered from the battlefields of both world wars.
After WWI, unable to keep up with the impossible task of removing endless undetonated weapons, human and animal remains, the French government decided on a forced relocation of residents which led to the creation of the Zone Rouge. Entire villages wiped off the map were considered “casualties of war”.
“Douaumont, Destroyed Village”
Once manicured farmland was abandoned, and without human presence, soon became unrecognisable thick forestland.
“Here, stood the church.”
For decades however, much of this deceivingly lush forestland was still regularly used by forest keepers and hunters until 2004, when German researchers found extremely dangerous levels of up to 17% arsenic in the soil, tens of thousand times higher than levels typically found previously within the red zones.
The water in the area was found to contain toxic levels of arsenic that were 300 times above the tolerated amount and abnormally high lead levels were recorded in some animals, particularly in the livers of hunted wild boars.
The nearby residents, forest keepers and hunters of the area, like the ones who built the abandoned hut (pictured above) to have lunch and store their prey in, were never subject to any medical study. Authorities finally prohibited public access to the site in 2012, known locally now as “Place-Ã -Gaz”.
The French government actually formed a special agency dedicated entirely to the ongoing munitions clearing, called the Department du Deminage. Over time they’ve managed to reduce the size of the red zone and return less affected zones to civilian and agricultural use. Unfortunately, in several cases, this was done much too prematurely…
The map below indicates the red zone and the less dangerous zones in yellow, green and blue.
Until the mid 1970s, much of the “clean-up” was only done superficially, destroying hundreds of thousands of unexplored WWI chemical bombs without considering the leaks and contamination to the soil and water.
Alarming amounts of lead debris scattered by shrapnel were also left in place, contaminating the soil with non biodegradable lead, mercury and zinc likely to remain for at least 10,000 years to come.
After WWI, in a rush to convert areas for the growth of crops or livestock, the first industrial pig farm was established as early as 1929 near the site of the Battle of Verdun, the longest sustained conflict of World War I, lasting 300 days and costing more than 300,000 French and German lives. The 25 hectare pig farm was riddled with shell holes after the chemical treatment of the soil.
The French word “Verdunisation”, referring to the treatment of drinking water using chlorination which originated in Paris in 1911, actually takes its name from this region.
Farmers in less dangerous re-populated “yellow” and “blue zones”, still hit shells every year, exploding their tractors and narrowly escaping death by the remains of a hundred year old war. In Verdun, there are road signs to indicate a dumping grounds for farmers to leave the shells they’ve plowed up on their land to be collected by authorities.
They call it the “iron harvest”, in which nearly 900 tons of unexploded munitions are recovered each year by Belgian and French farmers after ploughing their fields.
Crops from these areas should be continuously monitored by the French and European government but there is some doubt as to whether this is actually being done enough or even at all.
Meanwhile, teetering on the edges of the Zone Rouge on northeastern France, surrounding villages and towns are making the best of a bad situation. To compensate for all the quarantined land they can’t and probably never will be able to farm or ever set foot on, locals take advantage of the region’s military history.
North of Verdun, in the ghost villages that “died for France” and were never rebuilt, discovery trails and memorial sites have been opened to the public around the red zones .
Locals also keep themselves busy with their own impressive private museums of war remains they’ve collected over the years in the area, lending pieces to local tourist museums.
A 20 hectare contaminated site abandoned by the French Society of Munitions Recovery, which went bankrupt in 2006. No one knows the effect this pollution is causing and no one known when or how it will be cleaned up. (Photography (c) Olivier Saint Hilaire)
The Red Zone is still very much off limits, an area of untold dangers to its surroundings. In 2012, it was announced that the consumption of drinking water was banned in 544 municipalities in the area due to exessive levels of percholate, used in the manufacturing of rockets and ammunition. Each of those municipalities affected by the ban correspond exactly to the locations of old front lines of major WWI and II battlefields.
I have been telling people this for years…. not even thinking about the danger from benzene part! Growing up in Texas…. getting into a hot car… first thing ya learn, put down those windows and let the hot air OUT before the air goes on! Am sending this on, Pattie! Maybe they will listen to YOU, ha! xoxoxoox, Cool Cheryl…
On Aug 24, 2015, at 11:30 AM, Pat Sanchez
This one is for all to read and then share...Might help save a life.
Now this isvery interesting! My car's manual says to roll down the windows to letout all the hot air before turning on the A/C. WHY? No wonder more folksare dying from cancer than ever before. We wonder where this stuff comesfrom, but here is an example that explains a lot of the cancer-causingincidents.
Many peopleare in their cars the first thing in the morning, and the last thing at night,7 days a week. As I read this, it makes me feel guilty and ill. Please pass this on to as many people as possible. Guess, it’s not toolate to make some changes.Please do NOT turn on A/C as soon as you enter thecar. Open the windows after you enter your car and then after a couple ofminutes, turn ON the AC.
Here's why: According to research, the car's dashboard, seats, a/c ducts, infact ALL of the plastic objects in your vehicle, emit Benzene, a Cancer causingtoxin. A BIG CARCINOGEN. Take the time to observe the smell ofheated plastic in your car when you open it, and BEFORE you start it up.Inaddition to causing cancer, Benzene poisons your bones, causes anemia andreduces white blood cells. Prolonged exposure can cause Leukemia andincreases the risk of some cancers. It can also cause miscarriages inpregnant women.
The "acceptable" Benzene level indoors is: 50 mg per sq. ft.A car parked indoors, with windows closed,will contain 400-800 mg of Benzene - 8 times the acceptable level. Ifparked outdoors in the sun, at a temperature above 60 degrees F, the Benzenelevel goes up to 2000-4000 mg, 40 times the acceptable level.
People who getinto the car, keeping the windows closed, will eventually inhale excessiveamounts of the BENZENE toxin. Benzene is a toxin that affects yourkidneys and liver. What's worse, it is extremely difficult for your body toexpel this toxic stuff.So friends, please open the windows and doors of yourcar - give it some time for the interior to air out (dispel the deadly stuff) before you enter the vehicle.
Please, share this valuable information with others.
On Line Blog Definition Google-Blog Definitionblog, short for web log, an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website.
