An Islamist preacher from Kuwait has called to destroy Egypt's Sphinx and pyramids, stating it is time for Muslims to erase the pharaohs' heritage. The alleged call comes as Islamic State jihadists ramp up their attacks against historic sites.

Although the ancient monuments are not religious – but rather cultural and historic sites – they should still be "destroyed" by Muslims, putting an end to the worship of images, preacher Ibrahim Al Kandari said, according to Al-Watan daily.

"The fact that early Muslims who were among prophet Mohammed’s followers did not destroy the pharaohs' monuments upon entering the Egyptian soil, does not mean that we shouldn't do it now," Al Kandari said.

Another call for the destruction of Egypt's main symbols comes from Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who suggested the demolition of the historic monuments is a "religious duty," Al Alam news reported on Sunday. In the extreme interpretations of Islam, no material objects should be idolized or worshiped.

It comes amid growing concerns over the safety of many other historic and architectural monuments in the region, where militants continue to destroy ancient cities and artifacts.

Only last week, the Islamic State reportedly destroyed and looted the ancient Assyrian city of Dur Sharrukin in northern Iraq, demolished the remains of the ancient city of Hatra, and bulldozed the city of Nimrud near Mosul. The assault on the latter has already been compared by archaeologists to the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001.

READ MORE: Iraqi dealers confirm ISIS hoarding gold, precious metals to issue currency – report

In 2012, an Egyptian cleric also issued a fatwa calling to rid the country of its pyramids and the Sphinx. The member of the radical Salafi movement said he wanted the antiquities demolished, as Prophet Mohammed destroyed the idols in Mecca, and demanded Egypt's tourism ministry be abolished, comparing the industry to "prostitution and debauchery."

The religious ruling was denounced by Egypt's officials and scholars, who claimed the site was part of the country's cultural – not religious – heritage.

Maʾmūn @AlMuwa7id Follow @harmlesstree2 @AnonOperations2 2days Egypt is NOT Islamic but SECULAR. In the past Mamlukes tried 2 damage d Sphinx! 12:31 PM - 2 Mar 2015

Attacks on the Sphinx date back centuries. Despite many legends surrounding the monument's missing nose – with harm from Napoleon's cannon being among the most popular myths – historians believe it was actually destroyed by Sufi Muslim Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr in the 14th century, after he learned that some peasants worshipped the Sphinx.

(RT)

This spring should reward plenty of star-gazers, especially in Britain, which will experience its deepest solar eclipse in 15 years, as well as a Supermoon, all at the same time – an event that will sink the island into twilight for two whole hours.

The Supermoon eclipse, as the phenomenon is known, is an astronomical alignment where the Moon is sent on a trajectory between the Sun and the Earth, depriving us of light. The event will occur on March 20 at around 8:40GMT.

Scotland will have it best though, with a whopping 98 percent of the sky darkened, compared to about 85 percent for the south of England. For best results the Scottish need to look up starting 9:36 am.

Other areas in Britain will only get around 30 percent.

Similar events took place in 2006, 2008 and 2011, but neither of them can touch the upcoming Supermoon eclipse, except an event that occurred in 1999.

Daniel Gennaoui @DanielGennaoui Follow Amazing pictures of a super moon. Check out the album: http://bit.ly/NiumeSupermoon #nature #supermoon 4:15 AM - 7 Mar 2015

We’ll have to wait three years for the next one in 2018. However, only 2026 will present us with a deep solar eclipse once again. As for the magnitude, it won’t be until 2090 that we get to see anything like the 1999 and upcoming March 20 events.

Whenever particularly striking displays take place, it is because the Moon is close to the Earth. According to Dr Edward Bloomer of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the March eclipse will see the Moon closer to us than it has been in more than 18 years.

“The Earth is orbiting around the Sun and sometimes is slightly closer and sometimes further away, and the Earth is also wobbling around on its axis,” the Telegraph cites him as saying.

“Likewise the orbit of the Moon around the Earth is elliptical and slightly tilted so it’s rare for the Sun, Earth and Moon to actually line up,” he also said. And when the Moon’s orbit is as close as possible to the Earth’s, we have a total eclipse, Bloomer explains.

That’s when the Supermoon appears, and that is what will take place in Britain in a few days, as our satellite appears to us as an enormous black, glowing orb, shortly before March 20.

The only thing the Brits have to worry about is weather. It can potentially ruin their viewing experience, with the possibility of clouds and rain.

But if skies are clear, another treat for everyone will be the moon itself. With such proximity and lighting conditions, a pair of binoculars will give the viewer surface details that could never be seen with the naked eye.

However, it’s not just the fun factor of such events that is attracting attention. The Brits are afraid it might cause power grid failures as well. The National Grid says around 50 percent of power will be lost throughout the morning hours later in March.

But Britain will remain relatively unscathed, compared to its European neighbors, where up to 10 percent of energy is generated sustainably, meaning they depend more on the sun. According to the UK’s energy body, only 1.5 percent of power there is generated by solar panels. And since people will be going out in droves to watch the spectacle, energy consumption should drop almost at the same time the shortages will strike, it says.

Read moreSolar eclipse next March threatens Europe solar grid, temp ‘may drop 6C in 30 minutes’

The European Network Transmission System Operators for Electricity says, according to the Independent, “with the increase of installed photovoltaic energy generation, the risk of an incident could be serious without appropriate countermeasures.”

"Within 30 minutes the solar power production would decrease from 17.5 gigawatts to 6.2GW and then increase again up to 24.6GW. This means that within 30 minutes the system will have to adapt to a load change of -10GW to +15GW," said Patrick Graichen, executive director of the Berlin-based think-tank on renewable energy Agora Energiewende, as cited by the Financial Times.

While the world is only hearing about the Supermoon eclipse now, energy companies have been preparing for the event for months in advance, some in Europe setting up contingency measures for extracting energy from other power stations.

Experts predict that precautionary methods will only increase with time, as more solar energy becomes increasingly commonplace.

(RT)

Rabbi and 'New York Times' best-selling author predicts what the Shemitah will bring in 2015. (Charisma News File)

As the world waits to see what the end of a seven-year biblical cycle known as theShemitah may bring this fall, New York Times best-selling author Rabbi Jonathan Cahn issued a warning to prepare for economic calamity, war in the Middle East or even worse.

"I will state a warning which I have stated before," Cahn told hundreds of people gathered at the Prophecy in the News conference in Orlando, Florida, this weekend. "Whether it comes in this time parameter of the Shemitah or the year following or not, I believe a great shaking is going to come to this land and to the world that will involve the collapsing of the American economy ... and the removal of its blessings and prosperity.

"Whether it begins with the economic realm or not, I believe it's going to be bigger than the economic realm and it may have the effect of famine or cutting off infrastructure for a time. The shaking doesn't have to take place in the Shemitah (year), but I believe we need to be ready."

Cahn's warning has to do with what is known as the biblical Shemitah, or the Sabbath Year. During this year, according to Exodus and Leviticus, there was to be no working of the land. The last day of the Shemitah, Elul 29, is considered the "wipeout day" when all debts were "wiped clean." The Shemitah is meant to be a blessing, but when Israel turned away from God it became "a sign of judgment on a nation that has driven God out of its life."

In The Mystery of the Shemitah, Cahn described how this biblical pattern is connected to numerous events in modern history, including the rise of America to superpower status, World Wars I and II, the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland, the Six-Day War and even the rising of the World Trade Center.

He also noted a pattern of judgments at seven-year intervals in September 2001 and 2008 marked by the greatest crashes in Wall Street history, up to that time. The first occurred on Sept. 17, 2001, just a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the second occurred on Sept. 29, 2008. Both occurred on the biblical day of Elul 29, the very day appointed to wipe out the financial accounts of a nation. The next one occurs on Sept. 13.

"For years, financial observers have been mystified why it is that all the greatest crashes tend to take place the same time of year," Cahn says. "When is it? September to October. What if we take the greatest crashes in history. Do any of them take place at the end of the seven-year cycle of the Shemitah at the time of the wipeout and the answer is, 'Yes.' Every single one of them does. And the thing is the phenomenon is increasing. It's intensifying."

While the current Shemitah runs from September 2014 through this September, Cahn told the audience that the "Super Shemitah"—or the year of Jubilee, the year at the end of seven cycles of the Shemitah—begins this September and runs through September 2016.

"What people don't realize is one of the missing keys of end-times prophecy is the Shemitah," says Cahn, author of The Harbinger, which has sold more than 2 million copies. "What's the end of end-times prophecy? The Tribulation. How long is the Tribulation period? Seven years. It's a cycle of Shemitahs that goes back to Daniel's 70 sevens, which is linked to the Shemitah and linked to the judgment of Israel and the 70 years of judgment. Every seventh year is a Shemitah, but every seventh Shemitah is a Super-Shemitah, which we call the Jubilee ... ."

Despite these patterns, though, Cahn says God is in no way bound by the cycle.

"Now nothing has to happen, but if it follows the course of most times when people predict things like this they're wrong, but if it follows the course here's what would happen. According to the pattern, each time it happens, there is war in the Middle East. No. 2, there is a major war focused on Israel—World War I and the 1967 Six-Day War. No. 3, that war results in an end-times restoration of the next step of end-times prophecy."

In the book of Genesis, the Shemitah began with the Pharoah's prophetic dream of 14 cows—seven healthy and seven sick. God revealed to Joseph that the seven healthy cows represented seven years of prosperity, while the sick were the seven years of famine to follow.

"God gives a warning to Egypt to tell them what is coming," Cahn says. "The turning point is that seventh cow."

During his talk, Cahn pointed to a sign with biblical roots that went viral on newswires Sept. 25, 2014—the very day the world entered the current Shemitah: a cow with the number seven on its head.

"The pattern of the Shemitah is ... it begins so undramatic you barely notice it," Cahn says.

Here are the signs that Cahn revealed about the beginning of the Shemitah last year, on or around Sept. 25.

• The stock markets became violent and started crashing for about a month

• A massive earthquake shook parts of America

• The manifestations of Ebola

• The Supreme Court was tackling the issue of gay marriage on a national scale

• China overtakes the U.S. as the No. 1 economic power

• Russia takes the title of strongest military power away from America

"This is the beginning of the ending of the American Age," Cahn says. "We are seeing things we have never seen in human history."

Could this be the beginning of the end of the ages—not just America?

"It is no accident. The Bible says woe to those who call evil good and good evil. It is no accident that at the same time the nation is calling evil good, it's calling good—like you, like believers—evil. What's happening now is you're hearing more and more of Christians being persecuted for simply trying to stay true to their faith. Everything is coming to a head."

The debate over a possible nuclear deal with Iran has reached a new level in Washington, after a group of Republican senators signed an open letter to Tehran warning that any potential deal with President Obama could be scrapped.

For the first time in American diplomatic history, one political party is devising its own foreign policy with its own entreaties to foreign governments.

Not content with having Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address Congress and the American people and tell them the President’s approach to Iran is wrong, Republican senators yesterday sent an “open letter” to Iran’s leaders advising them that President Obama doesn’t have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them.

The letter warned Tehran that any nuclear deal needs congressional approval in order to last beyond Obama’s term and that without that step Iran will be left a “mere executive agreement” between Obama and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Republicans are not only making common cause with hardliners in Iran, they’re also undermining our President’s capacity to deal with foreign governments and compromising his authority as Commander-in-Chief. In so doing, they’re jeopardizing the safety and security of the United States.

“In my forty-five years of political involvement, I don’t remember any act by a major party that comes as close as the Republicans’ recent actions to what might be called treason” says Robert Reich, Former Member of President Clinton Cabinet and Professor at UC Berkeley.

THE LETTER

There’s a charming naiveté to the open letter [PDF] by 47 Republican senators that condescendingly seeks to explain features of the U.S. constitutional system to Iran’s leaders that they otherwise “may not fully understand.”

The missive warns that, with respect to “your nuclear negotiations with our government … any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress” could be revoked by the next president “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

---

WE THE PEOPLE PETITION and STATEMENT

We petition the Obama Administration to:

File charges against the 47 U.S. Senators in violation of The Logan Act in attempting to undermine a nuclear agreement.

On March 9th, 2015, forty-seven United States Senators committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years.

At a time when the United States government is attempting to reach a potential nuclear agreement with the Iranian government, 47 Senators saw fit to instead issue a condescending letter to the Iranian government stating that any agreement brokered by our President would not be upheld once the president leaves office.

This is a clear violation of federal law. In attempting to undermine our own nation, these 47 senators have committed treason.

---

Sign the Petition NOW >>>>

• About Author
• Latest Posts

Veterans Today

The Veterans Today Network is the group that manages VeteransToday.com

Powered by Starbox