Sunday, May 31, 2020
A Cybersecurity Firm’s Sharp Rise and Stunning Collapse
A Reporter at Large
Tiversa dominated an emerging online market—before it was accused of fraud, extortion, and manipulating the federal government.
By Raffi Khatchadourian
October 28, 2019
I. THE FOOTBALL
Before Robert Boback got into the field of cybersecurity, he was a practicing chiropractor in the town of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, twelve miles northwest of Pittsburgh. He was also selling used cars on eBay and flipping houses purchased at police auctions. The decision to branch out into computers came in 2003, after he watched a “60 Minutes” report by Lesley Stahl about pirated movies. For years, while digital piracy was devastating the music industry, Hollywood had largely been spared; limitations on bandwidth curtailed the online trade in movies. But this was changing, Stahl noted: “The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something, fast, they could be in the same boat as the record companies.”
Boback was thirty-two years old, with a Norman Rockwell haircut and a quick, smooth, entrepreneurial manner. Growing up amid the collapsing steel industry, he had dreamed of making it big, hanging posters of high-priced cars—a Lamborghini, a Porsche—on his bedroom wall and telling himself that they would one day be his. After high school, he trained to be a commercial pilot, imagining a secure, even glamorous, life style—but then the airline industry began laying off pilots, and he switched to chiropractic, inspired by a well-off practitioner his family knew.
Watching “60 Minutes,” Boback saw a remarkable new business angle. Here was a multibillion-dollar industry with a near-existential problem and no clear solution. He did not know it then, but, as he turned the opportunity over in his mind, he was setting in motion a sequence of events that would earn him millions of dollars, friendships with business élites, prime-time media attention, and respect in Congress. It would also place him at the center of one of the strangest stories in the brief history of cybersecurity; he would be mired in lawsuits, countersuits, and counter-countersuits, which would gather into a vortex of litigation so ominous that one friend compared it to the Bermuda Triangle. He would be accused of fraud, of extortion, and of manipulating the federal government into harming companies that did not do business with him. Congress would investigate him. So would the F.B.I.
But as Boback was watching “60 Minutes” all he saw was a horizon of possibility. Stahl pointed out that pirated music and movies were spreading primarily on peer-to-peer networks—an obscure precinct of the Internet that was sometimes called the Deep Web. The networks were made up of hundreds of thousands of decentralized connections, in which one computer was linked to no more than five others, and then through those five computers to many more, expanding exponentially like the branches of a large tree. These connections were invisible to search engines like Google. Even the software that allowed users to browse them had only a limited field of vision—glimpsing just random fragments of the tree at a time. Boback wondered if it was possible to design a system that could scan the whole tree at once, then block people from sharing files on it. Certainly, this capability would be worth a lot.
Boback had no idea how to build such a thing, but he knew someone who might: a patient of his, Sam Hopkins, whose girlfriend had persuaded him to pursue chiropractic treatment after a car crash. Hopkins was in his thirties, too. He was soft-spoken, with a childlike disposition, a wispy physique, and a goatee. He had grown up in inner-city Pittsburgh, in a home where money was scarce. As a boy, he had taught himself how to program on a Commodore 64 that was on display at Sears. Bored with school, he dropped out, and built an Internet-service provider, which was sold to a local telecom company. By the time of his car accident, he was designing high-speed computer networks for Marconi Communications.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
LIVE SpaceX and NASA launching humans to space for the first time
SpaceX's 1st astronaut mission! Crew Dragon #DM-2 launch from historic NASA pad @Saturday 3:22pm ET
Friday, May 29, 2020
THE LAST DANCE LOS MUERTOS DANSE MACABRE
Though I do not wholly endorse all the statements of the narrator, most of "the events" and insights in this video are quite accurate.
Revisiting: I Am Legend
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Revisiting: I Am Legend
It was no coincidence that the 2007 film starring Will Smith and Alice Braga, dealt with the subject of a deadly virus. It was about an engineered virus intended to cure cancer, that eventually decimated the world's population in 2009. It seems as if the things that happen before our eyes are previously being telegraphed before they occur. This may be done for shock effect, or provided as a harbinger??? Now we find ourselves facing Labor Day, the last hurrah for the summer, and the return of children to school; We are also awaiting an (purported) advancing H1N1 Pandemic.
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Do we see any parallels here?
The film, I Am Legend begins around the 5th of September, 2012; Robert Neville (W. Smith) is a sole-survivor in New York City, whose only companion is his dog Samantha. They systematically look for survivors, food, and hunt deer in Mid-Town Manhattan; He drives at high velocity down 7th Avenue, and Park Avenue, since there are no other humans alive to impede high speed. Scenes from the past (just before the Epidemic killed virtually killed everyone else) are intermittently flashed several times; when he relives the last moments with his family before they perished; This was supposedly a worldwide epidemic, yet, the film's focus is New York City (which was quarantined as the Pandemic progressed).
We are eventually introduced to the Darkseekers, a mutant breed of humans that are infected with the deadly virus, but, survive as nocturnal cannibals. Robert Neville's dog Samantha dies after an vicious encounter with darkseeker dogs. Well, not to bore you with the details, after a revenge attack on the mutants, Robert Neville crashes his SUV, and is rescued by Ann (Alice Braga), who with her son has travelled from Mary-land; They are on their way to a survivor colony in the mountains of Vermont.
At the end of the film, the Darkseekers enter Robert Neville's home in Washington Square, where Ann and her son Ethan have taken refuge. They eventually withdraw to the safety of the basement where R. Neville has a lab. Dr. Neville draws some of his blood (He is immune and has been working with this virus since before it became a Pandemic) and gives it to Ann and asks her to hide until he destroys the attacking darkseekers. Neville (he also dies) blows himself up, along with the mutants with a grenade, while Ann and Ethan hide in a Coal chute.
The final scene is a doosey:
Ann and her son Ethan, are driving on a country road (New England?) surrounded by fall colored trees; They arrive at a large gate in the road, they stop and start to walk towards the 10 foot tall gate that stretches from one end of the road to the other. Suddenly, the gate opens and there are armed men waiting and welcoming Ann and Ethan; Ann, then shakes a man's hand, and then hands him the vial of Neville's blood (the antibody). Here's the scenario as she walks into this compound: There is a White painted Church with a large steeple at the far end of the road, on the right there is an octagonal road sign indicating there is a stop sign ahead, and on the left side an American flag draping towards the road. Then, Ann recites this cryptic verse:
In 2009, a deadly virus burned through our civilization...
...pushing humankind to the edge of extinction.
Dr. Robert Neville dedicated his life...
...to the discovery of a cure...
...and the restoration of humanity.
on September 9th 2012...
...at approximately 8:49PM...
...he discovered the cure.
And, at 8:52 he gave his life to defend it.
We are his legacy.
This is his legend.
Light up the Darkness.
The End
Other Observations:
1.Twice during the film Robert Neville mentioned:
"This is Ground Zero"; "This is my site".
"I'm not gonna let this happen, I can fix this".
2.During the scenes when Ann and Robert Neville are in the Brownstone home in NYC;
Dr. Neville comes down the stairs and enters the living room where Ethan is sitting watching the animated film 'Shrek'.
Shrek dialogue:
Man: You there! Ogre.By the order of Lord Farquaad...
...I am authorized to place you both under arrest...
...and transport you to a designated resettlement facility.
Shrek: Oh, Really? You and what army?
3.Twice during the film Dr. Neville tells Ann, "There is no God".
As I've stated before we are living in the strangest of times. However, we must sometimes listen to the nonsense that is produced for mass consumption, and notice the subliminal messages that accompany the so-called entertainment; Which is something that anyone with a discerning ear can decipher and interpret. Brethren, there are no coincidences in matters like these, especially when they mimic the current events. Stay tuned! Vigilance is the word.
Arsenio.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Coronavirus Monitoring Bracelets Flood the Market, Ready to Snitch on People Who Don’t Distance
Surveillance firms around the world are licking their lips at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cash in on the coronavirus by repositioning one of their most invasive products: the tracking bracelet.
Body monitors are associated with criminality and guilt in the popular imagination, the accessories of Wall Street crooks under house arrest and menace-to-society parolees. Unlike smartphones, de facto tracking devices in their own right, strapped-on trackers are expressly designed to be attached to the body and exist solely to report the user’s whereabouts and interactions to one or more third parties; they don’t play podcasts or tell you how many steps you took that day to sweeten the surveillance.
But a climate of perpetual bio-anxiety has paved the way for broader acceptance of carceral technologies, with a wave of companies trying to sell tracking accessories to business owners eager to reopen under the aegis of responsible social distancing and to governments hoping to keep a closer eye on people under quarantine.
Take AiRISTA Flow, a Maryland-based outfit that helps corporations track their “assets,” breathing or not. In an April 21 press release, the company announced it would begin selling Bluetooth and Wi-Fi trackers to be worn on an employee’s wrist like a Fitbit — or around their neck like a cowbell. “When people come within six feet of each other for a period of time,” the company wrote in a press release, “the device makes an audible chirp and a record of the contact is made in the AiRISTA Flow software system.” But the tracking goes far beyond audible chirps: AiRISTA’s platform allows employers to continuously upload a record of close encounters to a corporate cloud, providing an up-to-date list of presumed social distancing violators that would double as a detailed record of workplace social interactions.
The company’s marketing language is explicit in talking up the nonviral benefits of tracking your workers’ every move: By helping companies “Locate people and things in real time” (the two are seemingly treated interchangeably), they can expect a “Reduction in unplanned downtime,” “Improved asset utilization rates, [and a] reduced need for spares.”
“When people come within six feet of each other the device makes an audible chirp.”
Column: Nothing divides America more than tossing politics into a heated religious debate
Denial of responsibility!
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Members of the congregation stand during a service May 17, 2020, at the Metro Praise International Church in Chicago.(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
Since the founding of America, religion has been at the center of many of the most contentious conflicts our nation has encountered. We should have known it would be only a matter of time before the church was inserted into the coronavirus pandemic.
Throughout history, religion has brought us together when our survival as a nation was under siege. But just as often, it has ripped us apart when politicians sought to use it to justify selfish deeds.
The unholy alliance between religion and politics is an effective tool in creating discord, dissension and division. That’s why politicians find it so appealing.
The debate over whether churches should be included as essential businesses that are allowed to reopen during the pandemic began before Donald Trump officially entered the fray on Friday. But like everything he touches, the focus is now all about him.
In Illinois and other states, churches have filed lawsuits to force governors to exclude churches from stay-at-home orders and allow them to hold in-person services. Across the country, several churches of various faiths and denominations have united in a call to keep the government away from religion and allow people to practice their faith during the statewide shutdowns.
Any other time, it would be a worthy debate. But in the midst of a pandemic, the push to reopen churches seems like a hypocritical demand by those who use the Bible as a guide for how they should treat the weakest and most vulnerable. Most parishioners realize that congregating at this stage would be both risky and selfish.
The church service is as much about socializing as it is spiritual rejuvenation. If that were not the case, online services would sufficient. The ritual of the Sunday service is rooted in the practice of fellowship, in which parishioners draw upon each other for emotional support in times of sorrow and despair.
It makes sense that they would long for that structure now that the coronavirus has taken away everything familiar and made the future uncertain. But the religious rights of some should not outweigh the health and safety of others.
The argument is legally complex, and even the courts don’t always agree. Last week, Trump gave churches an opening to defy state orders by offering blanket immunity he does not clearly have the authority to give.
“Today I am identifying houses of worship — churches, synagogue and mosques — as essential places that provide essential services,” he said during a White House briefing. “Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential but have left out churches and other houses of worship. It’s not right.”
Monday, May 25, 2020
Joe Biden on restoring the soul of our nation
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a community event, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019, in Ottumwa, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
December 29, 2019
Joe Biden
(RNS) — Today’s politics are too toxic, mean and divisive. People are too quick to demonize and dehumanize, too ready to dismiss all that we have in common as Americans.
That’s beneath us as a country. It doesn’t reflect our values; it’s not who we are. That’s why, since I first declared my candidacy for president, I’ve said: I’m running to restore the soul of our nation.
I first learned those values growing up in a Catholic, middle-class family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware. I learned them at my father’s dinner table, at Sunday Mass and at St. Paul’s and Holy Rosary Elementary. The nuns there taught us reading, writing, math and history — as well as core concepts of decency, fair play and virtue. They took as a starting point the teaching from the Gospel of Matthew: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
My whole idea of self and family, of community and the wider world, stems from those lessons. They drilled into me a core truth: Every single human being deserves to be treated with dignity. Everyone. The poor and the powerless, the marginalized and vulnerable, the least of these. That has been the animating principle of my life and my faith.
Scripture is clear: It’s not enough to just wish the world were better. It’s our duty to make it so.
And when my father would remind me, again and again — “Joey, there’s no greater sin than the abuse of power” — I knew: It’s never enough to just abhor or avoid the abuse of power; you have to stand up to end it, wherever it’s found.
That’s what first drew me to public service decades ago — during the civil rights movement, when Americans of all faiths were called on to put our values into action, to fight the heinous abuse of power that is segregation and bigotry.
It’s why I fought to pass the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 — to confront the domestic violence that so many back then tried to dismiss as a “family matter,” and to instead give survivors a voice and a path to justice and recovery.
It’s why I’ve always stood up for working families — for a higher minimum wage and for family and medical leave; for unemployment, overtime pay, collective bargaining rights and workplace safety.
For me, leadership — and basic human decency — has always meant confronting the abuse of power, and fighting back against anyone who exploits the vulnerable for personal gain.
By ripping children from their mothers' arms at the border and holding asylum-seeking families in cages indefinitely; by fanning the flames of hate and violence at home; by embracing dictators abroad who repress their own people; by threatening hardworking families’ health care and food assistance, while giving tax cuts to big corporations — President Donald Trump is dimming the beacon of hope and justice that we’ve always been as a nation.
In 2020, we must decide: Who do we want to be?
My faith teaches me that we should be a nation that not only accepts the truth of the climate crisis, but leads the world in addressing it. Pope Francis is right in “Laudato Si”: “Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years." As president, I’ll launch a $1.7 trillion clean energy revolution to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, creating 10 million jobs and starting to heal our imperiled planet.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
But they shall not cleave one to another
“And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”
Daniel 2:43
King James Version (KJV)
Young climate activists call for EU to radically reform farming sector
Climate change
Fridays for Future to publish letter urging reform of common agricultural policy ahead of European commission meeting
Fridays for Future to publish letter urging reform of common agricultural policy ahead of European commission meeting
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Fri 22 May 2020 02.00 EDT
The EU’s farming sector needs radical reform, and the common agricultural policy (CAP) must be rewritten if the climate crisis is to be tackled, a group of young climate activists will urge.
Fridays for Future, founded by teenagers in the wake of Greta Thunberg’s school strikes, will confront the European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, online to call for new plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and replace subsidies based on the amount of land farmed with payments for farmers supplying public goods, such as clean water, clean air and lower carbon emissions.
“[We] demand a pathway to climate neutrality for the EU’s agricultural and food sector,” the activists wrote in an open letter published ahead of the virtual meeting. “We need to transform direct payments into payments for public goods. Public money needs to flow into the transition to sustainable, climate-friendly and peasant [sic] agriculture. We need a new evidence-based and just CAP.”
The CAP is worth close to €60bn a year, and costs roughly €114 annually per citizen. However, the system has been blamed for the increase in intensive farming, overuse of pesticides and poor attention to soil conservation and wildlife protection.
Earlier this week, the EU published its biodiversity strategy, which would devote €20bn a year to boosting wildlife, and require the planting of 3bn trees in the next decade, but stopped short of the sweeping reform of the CAP that campaigners want.
“Current agropolicy is an immediate threat to our future,” Tilman von Samson, one of the activists, told the Guardian. “Not only because the CAP is inactive in reducing emissions – much worse, it is gambling away the potential for hope that lies in agriculture [which] can be a climate buffer.”
“Pretending to Save the World”: 12 Reasons Why We Need #PlatformAccountability in the Time of Coronavirus
By Justin Sanders
The world’s most powerful internet platforms are even more powerful, and more dangerous, than ever.
It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Trapped in our homes during the time of coronavirus, we are more reliant on companies like Google and Facebook than ever before. So their continued failures to address their massive problems, and their endless efforts at spin, are deeply distressing.
They are spending a lot of money to convince all of us how grateful we are to them. But we don’t forget that easily. Their failures to curb hate speech, misinformation, pedophilia, and piracy on their platforms – and the continued profits generated by their irresponsible behavior – are problems that haven’t gone away.
And we won’t forget. We can’t.
Here are 12 more reasons why, more than ever before, we need #PlatformAccountability during the pandemic, culled from across the spectrum of political, cultural, and sociological discourse.
1) Because it’s in the interest of fostering the health of the population.
“Throughout the last decade of researching platform politics, I have never witnessed such collateral damage to society caused by unchecked abusive content spread across the web and social media. Everyone interested in fostering the health of the population should strive to hold social-media companies to account in this moment.” – Joan Donovan, Director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Therezinha Barbalho Ordained into the Gospel Ministry
JUNE 27, 2019 BY COMMUNICATION
Therezinha Barbalho Ordained into the Gospel Ministry
Pastor Therezinha Barbalho stands with her husband, Zeli Leite, and President Bill Miller.
Potomac administration recently had the privilege of ordaining Therezinha Barbalho, pastor of the Silver Spring SDA Church (Md.), into the gospel ministry.
“The call to ministry isn’t when someone says we couldn’t have done that without you,” said President Bill Miller, during the service. “It’s not when committees recommended you for ordination, a degree, interviews or endorsements. The call to ministry is when we hear His voice and we walk with Him into the human mess. The call to ministry is learning our limits and learning to trust in the God that is there with us.”
Barbalho says she felt called to pastoral ministry at the age of 18 and went on to graduate with a degree in theology. She worked as a Bible worker in Belém, São Paulo and later pursued a law degree. Even while practicing as a licensed lawyer in Brazil for 13 years, she continued to serve as a volunteer minister. After moving to the United States, Barbalho served as an associate pastor for the New Jersey Conference and later came to Potomac to pastor the Richmond Brazilian church (Va.)—where she held her first baptismal ceremony—and the Silver Spring church (Md.), where she works to date.
“I receive this moment, so needed for 32 years, understanding that God is making me, and promises to make me, more and more dependent on him,” shared Barbalho, during the service. “That is how I receive this blessing. I thank the Seventh-day Adventist Church for trusting that I can become fully dependent on Him.”
$21M Brooklyn field hospital never saw a patient amid coronavirus pandemic
By Carl Campanile and Natalie Musumeci
May 22, 2020 | 6:58pm
The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red HookAP
A roughly $21 million Brooklyn field hospital authorized by the de Blasio administration at the height of the coronavirus pandemic opened and closed without ever seeing one patient, according to city officials.
The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook was one of several sites across the five boroughs converted into a medical facility as a way to relieve the city’s overburdened hospital system as the COVID-19 crisis mounted.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans on Mar. 31 — a day after the USNS Comfort hospital ship arrived in New York Harbor to aid in the coronavirus fight — for the $20.8 million Red Hook field hospital with an estimated capacity for 750 beds.
The field hospital was built by Texas-based construction company SLSCO.
“They are going to set it up rapidly and we’re then going to go to the next site, the next site, the next site to meet our goal,” de Blasio told reporters of the site during that press conference in which the mayor also outlined the details to turn Queens’ Billie Jean King National Tennis Center into a 350-bed temporary hospital.
A roughly $21 million Brooklyn field hospital authorized by the de Blasio administration at the height of the coronavirus pandemic opened and closed without ever seeing one patient, according to city officials.
The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook was one of several sites across the five boroughs converted into a medical facility as a way to relieve the city’s overburdened hospital system as the COVID-19 crisis mounted.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans on Mar. 31 — a day after the USNS Comfort hospital ship arrived in New York Harbor to aid in the coronavirus fight — for the $20.8 million Red Hook field hospital with an estimated capacity for 750 beds.
The field hospital was built by Texas-based construction company SLSCO.
“They are going to set it up rapidly and we’re then going to go to the next site, the next site, the next site to meet our goal,” de Blasio told reporters of the site during that press conference in which the mayor also outlined the details to turn Queens’ Billie Jean King National Tennis Center into a 350-bed temporary hospital.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Rep. Jackson Lee claims Biden made 'you ain't black' comment 'in jest'
Published May 22, 2020
Last Update 3 hrs ago
Rep. Jackson Lee claims Biden made 'you ain't black' comment 'in jest', his record on race 'is present'
House Judiciary Committee member Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, dismissed claims Friday that former Vice President Joe Biden was taking the African-American vote for granted or being insensitive when he made controversial remarks on a New York-based radio show.
Biden told "The Breakfast Club" that if African-Americans have a problem "figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black."
Jackson Lee told "Special Report" host Bret Baier that Biden's appearance on the talk show was the "right thing to do", since "The Breakfast Club" has a wide reach across the African-American community.
"And then, as well, I think the right thing to do was to own up that it might not have been as funny as we might have thought originally ... because it was done in jest," Jackson Lee said. "To be able to match his record up against his opponent any day, I believe he will come out with 100 percent [of the vote]. The vice president knows he can't take any community for granted and particularly the African-American community."
BIDEN SAYS 'YOU AIN'T BLACK' IF TORN BETWEEN HIM AND TRUMP
This isn't about religious freedom
Opinion by Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
Updated 2:43 PM ET, Fri May 22, 2020
Source: CNN
Churches feel 'tremendous strain' in a plunging economy 03:03
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is a fellow with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Follow him on Twitter @GuthrieGF. The views expressed here are the author's. View more opinion on CNN.
(CNN) One recent Friday, the same day President Donald Trump confirmed that Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Pence traveled to Iowa and signaled to religious leaders that they should reopen houses of worship. He falsely claimed that "for most healthy Americans, the risks that the coronavirus poses remains very low" and thanked religious leaders for "[stepping] forward back into the exercise of your faith." In addition, CNN reported the day prior that the Trump administration will not implement any of the guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on reopening, in part, because of a "religious freedom" concern about placing any restrictions on churches. The administration is once again trying to unfurl the banner of what it might describe as religious freedom, this time as cover for a premature push to reopen the economy.
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
"The liberties enshrined in the Constitution still apply to every American, even in the middle of a national emergency," Pence said on a conservative radio program last week, in reference to a religious freedom lawsuit in Virginia challenging the state's stay-at-home order. "President Trump and our entire administration have championed religious liberty."
From a wider perspective, the Covid-19 crisis also reveals a new dimension to how some conservatives have distorted our treasured American value of religious freedom.
The virus does not discriminate whether we are gathered in a house of worship or any other type of gathering. State and local governments are within their constitutional authority to include houses of worship in bans on gathering. Yet at least 20 states instituted some form of a religious exemption to their Covid-19 public-health orders. And in addition to the Virginia lawsuit, there have been at least a dozen more lawsuits in states such as Florida, Mississippi, Kansas, Virginia, California and Texas. Now the push for reopening by the administration has been coupled with a religious freedom argument. This comes as many religious communities are continuing to care for one another and the common good by adapting to the trying circumstances.
Father Scott Holmer of St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church in Bowie, Maryland, holds confession in the church parking lot on March 20.
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Thursday, May 21, 2020
DOJ warns Calif. Gov. Newsom not to discriminate against churches in reopening plans
DOJ warns Calif. Gov. Newsom not to discriminate against churches in reopening plans
California State Capitol building with state flag in Sacramento on a windy summer day with clear sky. | Getty/Stock photo
The U.S. Department of Justice has urged California officials to do more to protect the rights of houses of worship regarding orders aimed at limiting gatherings at certain venues to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Eric Dreiband, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom Tuesday regarding what he described as “several civil rights concerns with the treatment of places of worship” in the state’s reopening plans.
“Laws that do not treat religious activities equally with comparable nonreligious activities are subject to heightened scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” wrote Dreiband.
“Religious gatherings may not be singled out for unequal treatment compared to other nonreligious gatherings that have the same effect on the government’s public health interest, absent the most compelling reasons.”
Dreiband specifically cited Executive Orders N-33-20 and N-60-20 as areas where these religious liberty concerns were being raised.
Executive Order N-33-20, which was issued in March, restricted in-person worship gatherings while allowing for an “expansive” list of nonreligious gatherings to continue.
“California has not shown why interactions in offices and studios of the entertainment industry … are included on the list of being allowed with social distancing where telework is not practical, while gatherings with social distancing for purposes of religious worship are forbidden, regardless of whether remote worship is practical or not,” continued the letter.
The U.S. Department of Justice has urged California officials to do more to protect the rights of houses of worship regarding orders aimed at limiting gatherings at certain venues to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Eric Dreiband, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom Tuesday regarding what he described as “several civil rights concerns with the treatment of places of worship” in the state’s reopening plans.
“Laws that do not treat religious activities equally with comparable nonreligious activities are subject to heightened scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” wrote Dreiband.
“Religious gatherings may not be singled out for unequal treatment compared to other nonreligious gatherings that have the same effect on the government’s public health interest, absent the most compelling reasons.”
Dreiband specifically cited Executive Orders N-33-20 and N-60-20 as areas where these religious liberty concerns were being raised.
Executive Order N-33-20, which was issued in March, restricted in-person worship gatherings while allowing for an “expansive” list of nonreligious gatherings to continue.
“California has not shown why interactions in offices and studios of the entertainment industry … are included on the list of being allowed with social distancing where telework is not practical, while gatherings with social distancing for purposes of religious worship are forbidden, regardless of whether remote worship is practical or not,” continued the letter.
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Obamagate Is Not a Conspiracy Theory
David Harsanyi
May 12, 2020, 5:46 PM EDT
Those sharing #Obamagate hashtags on Twitter would do best to avoid the hysterics we saw from Russian-collusion believers, but they have no reason to ignore the mounting evidence that suggests the Obama administration engaged in serious corruption.
Democrats and their allies, who like to pretend that President Obama’s only scandalous act was wearing a tan suit, are going spend the next few months gaslighting the public by focusing on the most feverish accusations against Obama. But the fact is that we already have more compelling evidence that the Obama administration engaged in misconduct than we ever did for opening the Russian-collusion investigation.
It is not conspiracy-mongering to note that the investigation into Trump was predicated on an opposition-research document filled with fabulism and, most likely, Russian disinformation. We know the DOJ withheld contradictory evidence when it began spying on those in Trump’s orbit. We have proof that many of the relevant FISA-warrant applications — almost every one of them, actually — were based on “fabricated” evidence or riddled with errors. We know that members of the Obama administration, who had no genuine role in counterintelligence operations, repeatedly unmasked Trump’s allies. And we now know that, despite a dearth of evidence, the FBI railroaded Michael Flynn into a guilty plea so it could keep the investigation going.
What’s more, the larger context only makes all of these facts more damning. By 2016, the Obama administration’s intelligence community had normalized domestic spying. Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, famously lied about snooping on American citizens to Congress. His CIA director, John Brennan, oversaw an agency that felt comfortable spying on the Senate, with at least five of his underlings breaking into congressional computer files. His attorney general, Eric Holder, invoked the Espionage Act to spy on a Fox News journalist, shopping his case to three judges until he found one who let him name the reporter as a co-conspirator. The Obama administration also spied on Associated Press reporters, which the news organization called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.” And though it’s been long forgotten, Obama officials were caught monitoring the conversations of members of Congress who opposed the Iran nuclear deal.
Those sharing #Obamagate hashtags on Twitter would do best to avoid the hysterics we saw from Russian-collusion believers, but they have no reason to ignore the mounting evidence that suggests the Obama administration engaged in serious corruption.
Democrats and their allies, who like to pretend that President Obama’s only scandalous act was wearing a tan suit, are going spend the next few months gaslighting the public by focusing on the most feverish accusations against Obama. But the fact is that we already have more compelling evidence that the Obama administration engaged in misconduct than we ever did for opening the Russian-collusion investigation.
It is not conspiracy-mongering to note that the investigation into Trump was predicated on an opposition-research document filled with fabulism and, most likely, Russian disinformation. We know the DOJ withheld contradictory evidence when it began spying on those in Trump’s orbit. We have proof that many of the relevant FISA-warrant applications — almost every one of them, actually — were based on “fabricated” evidence or riddled with errors. We know that members of the Obama administration, who had no genuine role in counterintelligence operations, repeatedly unmasked Trump’s allies. And we now know that, despite a dearth of evidence, the FBI railroaded Michael Flynn into a guilty plea so it could keep the investigation going.
What’s more, the larger context only makes all of these facts more damning. By 2016, the Obama administration’s intelligence community had normalized domestic spying. Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, famously lied about snooping on American citizens to Congress. His CIA director, John Brennan, oversaw an agency that felt comfortable spying on the Senate, with at least five of his underlings breaking into congressional computer files. His attorney general, Eric Holder, invoked the Espionage Act to spy on a Fox News journalist, shopping his case to three judges until he found one who let him name the reporter as a co-conspirator. The Obama administration also spied on Associated Press reporters, which the news organization called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.” And though it’s been long forgotten, Obama officials were caught monitoring the conversations of members of Congress who opposed the Iran nuclear deal.
Pope Francis: Migrants Are Forced to Flee ‘Like Jesus Christ’
TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images
THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D. 15 May 2020
ROME — Pope Francis has compared displaced persons to Jesus Christ in his annual message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
Bearing the title, “Like Jesus Christ, Forced to Flee: Welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating internally displaced persons,” the pope’s message for 2020 declared that the tragedy of internally displaced people is “one of the challenges of our contemporary world, especially because of “situations of conflict and humanitarian emergencies, aggravated by climate change.”
“I have decided to devote this Message to the drama of internally displaced persons, an often unseen tragedy that the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated,” the pontiff noted, adding that the health crisis “has relegated to the bottom of national political agendas those urgent international efforts essential to saving lives.”
This is a mistake, the pope insisted, since the crisis we are facing “should not make us forget the many other crises that bring suffering to so many people.”
According to the United Nations, internally displaced people (IDPs) are internal migrants who “have not crossed a border to find safety.”
“Unlike refugees, they are on the run at home,” it states. “IDPs stay within their own country and remain under the protection of its government, even if that government is the reason for their displacement.”
THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D. 15 May 2020
ROME — Pope Francis has compared displaced persons to Jesus Christ in his annual message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
Bearing the title, “Like Jesus Christ, Forced to Flee: Welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating internally displaced persons,” the pope’s message for 2020 declared that the tragedy of internally displaced people is “one of the challenges of our contemporary world, especially because of “situations of conflict and humanitarian emergencies, aggravated by climate change.”
“I have decided to devote this Message to the drama of internally displaced persons, an often unseen tragedy that the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated,” the pontiff noted, adding that the health crisis “has relegated to the bottom of national political agendas those urgent international efforts essential to saving lives.”
This is a mistake, the pope insisted, since the crisis we are facing “should not make us forget the many other crises that bring suffering to so many people.”
According to the United Nations, internally displaced people (IDPs) are internal migrants who “have not crossed a border to find safety.”
“Unlike refugees, they are on the run at home,” it states. “IDPs stay within their own country and remain under the protection of its government, even if that government is the reason for their displacement.”
Laudato Si' Week 2020
Posted on May 15, 2020 in: Events
The Week's Highlights
Christiana Figueres, an architect of the Paris climate agreement, will join Fr. Augusto Zampini-Davies, adjunct secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development, for an exclusive conversation about “Laudato Si’ at 5: As Prophetic and Relevant as Ever.”
This and a full week of workshops is below- all offered completely FREE of charge as part of Laudato Si’ Week.
Space is limited, so please register now to attend.
Your participation in Laudato Si’ Week is a sign of hope for all creation and our most vulnerable sisters and brothers. Thank you!
16-17 MAY | Laudato Si’ Week Retreat with Tomás Insua
Laudato Si’ Week begins with a two-day retreat to deepen our spirits. Grow in gratitude and connect with people around the world through prayer, reflections on the encyclical, and time with creation. Hear both the cry and the song of creation and find hope for the future. Group conversations and interactive exercises enrich the experience. Register here for this two-day event (English only)
Our featured speaker is Tomás Insua. Tomás co-founded GCCM after being awakened to the close connections between the climate crisis and social justice during a life-altering trip to the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). Tomás also served in the UN Climate Secretariat for COP21, worked as a marketeer for Google, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard's Kennedy School. This conversation takes place on Saturday and Sunday, 16 and 17 May. (English only)
Churches leave Mennonite denomination over theology, LGBT stance
By Samuel Smith, CP Reporter| Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Kingsfield Zurich Mennonite Church in Bluewater, Ontario | Google Street View
Congregations from three Anabaptist churches in Ontario have left the over 100-congregation Mennonite Church Eastern Canada over theological concerns, some of which relate to issues of sexuality and salvation.
“We announce with great sadness Kingsfield-Clinton and Kingsfield-Zurich Mennonite Church, Living Water Christian Fellowship and Maple View Mennonite Church have left the MC Eastern Canada family,” the church conference said a recent statement publicized by CanadianMennonite.org.
“After a healthy conversation with leadership from each congregation, we mourn their leaving, and we bless and pray God’s best for each of them in their future ministry.”
According to the magazine, the churches formalized their departures from the denomination earlier this spring.
Pastor Brent Kipfer of Maple View Mennonite Church in Wellesley told the magazine that his church began a discernment process after members of the evangelical congregation noticed a “more widely varying theological diversity within MC Eastern Canada and MC Canada.”
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
The True Agenda of the WHO: A New World Order Modeled After China
The WHO has been handling the COVID-19 outbreak in a specific matter. It went from downplaying the virus and lobbying against travel bans from China to pushing for the constant lockdown of the world and its economy. There’s a method behind the madness: The WHO is using the pandemic to move towards a New World Order that is modeled after China’s oppressive regime.
Published 3 weeks ago
on April 29, 2020
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 outside of China, the World Health Organization (WHO) has taken a prominent role in the handling of the pandemic on a global level. The unquestioned power and influence of this organization created by the United Nations lead most governments around the world to shape their policies and pandemic response according to the WHO’s data and guidelines. In other words, nations enabled a global (and non-democratic) entity to dictate decisions that are taken on a national and local level.
The result of this direct pipeline between the WHO and national governments has been profound and far-reaching. Fueled by apocalyptic models and projections, governments were urged to confine their entire population while shutting down their entire economies for several months. The devasting consequences of this global lockdown are still difficult to quantify. However, a prediction made in my article COVID-19 Lockdown: A Global Human Experiment quickly came to fruition: Billions of dollars were funneled from the working class towards the elite.
A Fast Company headline about the financial elite profiting from the pandemic.
So why is the WHO giving orders to nations and their democratically elected governments? Is it due to its proven track record and educated advice? Clearly not. Because the organization’s response to the pandemic at its earliest and most critical stages was nothing less than disastrous. Some might argue that it was even deliberate.
On January 14th, the WHO claimed that there was no human-to-human transmission – citing Chinese sources.
On February 4th, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke against travel restrictions on China, saying such measures could cause “fear and stigma”. He added that there “no reason for panic and fear”, he said.
Since most world governments blindly followed the WHO’s recommendations, air travel from China continued for weeks and allowed the spread of the virus across the world. And, when some countries nevertheless moved forward to stop travel from China, the WHO actively lobbied against it.
The WHO directly lobbied against banning travel to countries, including China.
A statement released as late as February 29, argued against travel bans because they “may disrupt businesses, and may have negative social and economic effects on the affected countries”.
“WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks,” the statement said.
“In general, evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions.”
Academic research by the University of Southampton has revealed up to 95 percent of deaths would not have happened if the WHO acted earlier.
– SKY News, China used WHO in a bid to open Australia’s borders
The last sentence is particularly damning: 95% of deaths could have been avoided if the WHO did not go against travel bans from China. Considering the fact the WHO actively worked against the single most important measure to stop the spread of the virus, why is it still shaping government policies? Because it is linked to the global elite.
The Power of the WHO
Despite spreading information that was outright false and dangerous, the WHO remains unquestionably influential across the world. On April 18th, the organization showcased its immense power by broadcasting Together At Home, a massive media event that had countless celebrities and powerful people praise the WHO and the elite entities behind it.
The WHO is also heavily invested in controlling the flow of information regarding the virus.
A headline from The Verdict.
Speaking on CNN’s Reliable Sources, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki stated that the streaming platform would be “removing information that is problematic” and that would include “anything that is medically unsubstantiated”. She added:
“So people saying ‘take vitamin C; take turmeric, we’ll cure you’, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy. Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.”
Why would YouTube even care if people talked about vitamin C in their videos? Because, since the beginning of the outbreak, the WHO has been suspiciously against any kind of remedy or solution against COVID-19. Every single time a treatment shows promise, the WHO and the media system that caters to it are quick to warn against them and even label it as dangerous.
Why? Because the WHO is banking on a single, universal solution: A Vaccine.
A Vaccine and Nothing Else
To fully understand the mindset behind the WHO, we must look at the funding behind the WHO.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Inter-America church leadership to hold special online Sabbath worship program
One hour program will feature messages from General Conference president Ted N.C. Wilson and Inter-American Division president Elie Henry.
May 09, 2020 | Miami, Florida, United States | Libna Stevens, Inter-American Division
[Photo Courtesy of the Inter-American Division]
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Inter-America will hold a one-hour live event for the Church territory on Saturday, May 16, 2020. The program will include a special greeting from General Conference president Ted N.C. Wilson and a biblical reflection by Elie Henry, president of the church in Inter-America. The program is scheduled to be streamed live online from 11 a.m. to 12 noon, EST.
“We have been following with interest the different initiatives that are being implemented every Sabbath in the territory to attend to the membership through online transmissions and we wanted to come together to worship and pray together for one hour,” said Henry.
Many of the Sabbath worship services throughout the 24 unions, or major church regions, have been weekly transmitting in coordination with local church districts, conferences or missions, by each union, or through a combination of the three, Henry said.
The one-hour Sabbath morning worship from the Inter-American Division leadership is short enough to allow regional programming to continue with their own online church services without altering their schedule, he explained.
To view Inter-America’s live one-hour Sabbath morning program on May 16, from 11 a.m. to 12 noon (EST), visit webcast.interamerica.org.
This article was originally published on the Inter-America Division’s website
Source: Adventist News Network
The Sabbath
The Sabbath question is one that will demand great care and wisdom in its presentation. Much of the grace and power of God will be needed to cast down the idol that has been erected in the shape of a false Sabbath. Lift up the standard, lift it up, higher and still higher. Point the people to the twentieth chapter of Exodus, in which the law of God is recorded. The first four of the ten commandments outline our duty to our Maker. He who is false to his God cannot be true to his neighbor. He who loves God supremely will love his neighbor as himself. Pride lifts itself up unto vanity, leading the human agent to make a god of himself. The gospel of Christ sanctifies the soul, expelling self-love.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” [Verse 8.] The Sabbath was instituted in Eden, after God had created the world. “Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.” [Genesis 2:1-3.]
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily My Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the Sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you; every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death; for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord; whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh He rested, and was refreshed.” [Exodus 31:12-17.]
Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 23 (1908), par.27-29.
Troublous Times Before Us
We are not to locate ourselves where we will be forced into close relations with those who do not honor God.... A crisis is soon to come in regard to the observance of Sunday....
The Sunday party is strengthening itself in its false claims, and this will mean oppression to those who determine to keep the Sabbath of the Lord. We are to place ourselves where we can carry out the Sabbath commandment in its fullness. “Six days shalt thou labor,” the Lord declares, “and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” And we are to be careful not to place ourselves where it will be hard for ourselves and our children to keep the Sabbath.
If in the providence of God we can secure places away from the cities, the Lord would have us do this. There are troublous times before us.—Manuscript 99, 1908.
Country Living, p.20.
Friday, May 15, 2020
Here's what to expect for Laudato Si' Week as pope's ecology document turns five
May 15, 2020
by Brian Roewe
This article appears in the Laudato Si' at Five feature series. View the full series.
El Yunque National Forest, a rainforest in Puerto Rico, pictured in 2012 (CNS/Octavio Duran)
Festivities to mark the five-year anniversary of Pope Francis' landmark encyclical on the environment begin this weekend, just not how anyone originally anticipated.
With the planet still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, a more subdued, mostly digital Laudato Si' Week kicks off May 16 and runs through May 24. The nine-day Vatican-sponsored event will commemorate the pope's 2015 social encyclical "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home" — the first papal letter focused entirely on the Catholic Church's teachings on the environment and human ecology.
In early March, Francis invited the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to take part in Laudato Si' Week, saying, "I renew my urgent call to respond to the ecological crisis. The cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor cannot continue."
The theme for the week is "everything is connected," a central message in the encyclical made all the clearer as the novel coronavirus has raised dramatic consequences for all aspects of life around the world.
Originally, organizers envisioned the week as a mass mobilization of Catholics at the start of what scientists have said is a critical decade for addressing climate change. But instead of calls for increased environmental protections coming from throngs assembled in St. Peter's Square or gathered in plazas and parishes elsewhere around the globe, most of the celebrating will take place online, as was the case in April for the 50th Earth Day.
"It has not been easy to adapt, but we did it," said Tomás Insua, executive director and founder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, one of the week's main organizers.
Festivities to mark the five-year anniversary of Pope Francis' landmark encyclical on the environment begin this weekend, just not how anyone originally anticipated.
With the planet still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, a more subdued, mostly digital Laudato Si' Week kicks off May 16 and runs through May 24. The nine-day Vatican-sponsored event will commemorate the pope's 2015 social encyclical "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home" — the first papal letter focused entirely on the Catholic Church's teachings on the environment and human ecology.
In early March, Francis invited the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to take part in Laudato Si' Week, saying, "I renew my urgent call to respond to the ecological crisis. The cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor cannot continue."
The theme for the week is "everything is connected," a central message in the encyclical made all the clearer as the novel coronavirus has raised dramatic consequences for all aspects of life around the world.
Originally, organizers envisioned the week as a mass mobilization of Catholics at the start of what scientists have said is a critical decade for addressing climate change. But instead of calls for increased environmental protections coming from throngs assembled in St. Peter's Square or gathered in plazas and parishes elsewhere around the globe, most of the celebrating will take place online, as was the case in April for the 50th Earth Day.
"It has not been easy to adapt, but we did it," said Tomás Insua, executive director and founder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, one of the week's main organizers.
Related: Coronavirus compels climate activists to shift from streets to screen
Laudato Si' Week is sponsored by the Vatican's Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, which is led by Cardinal Peter Turkson. More than 100 Catholic organizations worldwide have signed on as partners, among them numerous religious orders, chapters of Caritas Internationalis, development agencies and bishops' conferences.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Monday, May 11, 2020
Sunday, May 10, 2020
CDC scientists overruled in White House push to restart airport fever screenings for COVID-19
INVESTIGATIONS
The White House is pushing a return to its failed experiment in relying on temperature screening of air travelers to detect coronavirus despite vehement objections from the nation's top public health agency, internal documents obtained by USA TODAY show.
The discord underscores the administration’s disregard for science and the diminished standing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a moment when local governments, businesses and community leaders are seeking direction on how to reopen safely.
Recent emails show CDC scientists, who have begun owning up to initial missteps in the federal response, trying to persuade the administration to reconsider.
The White House directive to check travelers in 20 U.S. airports for fever comes after earlier efforts by the CDC to screen travelers returning from China failed to stop the global pandemic from reaching the United States.
“Thermal scanning as proposed is a poorly designed control and detection strategy as we have learned very clearly,” Dr. Martin Cetron, the CDC’s director of global mitigation and quarantine, wrote in an email to Department of Homeland Security officials on Thursday. “We should be concentrating our CDC resources where there is impact and a probability of mission success.”
Cetron questioned his agency’s legal authority to execute the airport plan, ending the email: “Please kindly strike out CDC from this role.”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows pressed ahead anyway, directing the DHS to announce the airport screenings, which would be visible and instill confidence in travelers, according to meeting notes.
Passengers with fever, Meadows said, would be referred to the CDC for clearance. The full plan has not yet been finalized.
The exchange follows two weeks of internal skirmishes between the CDC and the Office of Management and Budget over how to safely reopen the nation’s schools, restaurants and churches.
Coronavirus And The New World Order
Volume 39 Issue Five May 2020
Last Trumpet Ministries, PO Box 806, Beaver Dam, WI 53916
Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org
"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."
Romans 5:1-5
"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."
"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."
Lamentations 3:21-26
In this issue of the Last Trumpet Newsletter, we will once again address the unprecedented events of our day. As I write this newsletter, much of the entire world, including most of the United States, remains in lockdown mode while COVID-19, a respiratory illness caused by a new strain of coronavirus, continues to spread. It is truly mind-boggling how upended our lives have become as many of us are compelled to stay home until government authorities deem it safe for us to resume normal lives. While the infection rate continues to increase and the death count rises, economies around the world are sharply contracting. The extent of the economic damage is not fully understood at this point, but there is a very real possibility that the United States is on its way to a new Great Depression.
One thing that is absolutely evident as we navigate through our strange new daily lives is that many people are struggling to comprehend what is happening. Countless theories abound regarding the origin of COVID-19. Many have wondered if the virus was made or escaped from a lab in China, a possibility that I suspect may be true. Meanwhile, some Chinese officials have claimed that the virus may have been made in the United States and transported to China. (1) Most scientists, however, including the head of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, claim that it is highly unlikely that the virus was made in a laboratory. (2) The President, for his part, seems a little less certain. When asked if the virus could be manmade, Trump responded by saying, "More and more, we're hearing the story, and we'll see. A lot of strange things are happening, but there is a lot of investigation going on, and we're going to find out." (3)
Another popular theory that is often promulgated on YouTube and social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook is that the virus is not even real but rather an elaborate hoax. However, for that to be true, it would mean that nearly every country in the world, except for perhaps North Korea, would have to be involved in this complex coverup. If that were the case, then this planet is in far more trouble than we thought. Nevertheless, I do believe that the virus, officially known as SARS-CoV-2, is real. A friend of my mother-in-law is currently suffering from COVID-19, and I am told she is very sick due to underlying conditions. The woman from whom I purchased my house, who is a journalist now living in New York City, also caught COVID-19. The virus severely weakened her body, left her struggling to breathe, and destroyed her ability to taste or smell. At one point, she was given a marshmallow peep candy doused with hot sauce to see if she could taste it, and she could not even slightly discern this bizarre combination of flavors. (4) We have also received correspondence from readers indicating that they know people who have been stricken by COVID-19.
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Vice President Pence excludes largest block of Iowans of faith, religious group says
by Michael Howell
Friday, May 8th 2020
DES MOINES, Iowa —
The vice president excluded the largest block of religious Iowans when he spoke with Iowa faith leaders Friday in Des Moines, the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa said.
“Interfaith Alliance of Iowa would like Vice President Mike Pence to know that Iowa’s faith community is actually quite diverse and consists of more than the evangelical Christian community,” Interfaith Alliance executive director Connie Ryan said.
Ryan said while they were happy a Catholic bishop and Jewish rabbi were invited to the meeting, but disappointed no mainline protestant denominations were extended an invitation.
"Collectively, the mainline protestant denominations are the largest block of Iowans of faith, and they were left out of the conversation today with the Vice President.”
Pew Research Center data backs up that claim. It says 77% of Iowans are Christian and of that group 30% are mainline protestant. 28% are evangelical while 18% are Catholic.
"If hearing from a variety of faith leaders had been allowed, the Vice President would have learned that the vast majority of Iowa’s faith community does not plan to hold in-person gatherings any time soon," Ryan said.
This echoes a sentiment from 21 denominational faith leaders in Iowa who said earlier in the week, they would refrain from holding in-person gatherings for the time being.
Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a Des Moines church Friday with religious leaders (White House Press Pool)
DES MOINES, Iowa —
The vice president excluded the largest block of religious Iowans when he spoke with Iowa faith leaders Friday in Des Moines, the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa said.
“Interfaith Alliance of Iowa would like Vice President Mike Pence to know that Iowa’s faith community is actually quite diverse and consists of more than the evangelical Christian community,” Interfaith Alliance executive director Connie Ryan said.
Ryan said while they were happy a Catholic bishop and Jewish rabbi were invited to the meeting, but disappointed no mainline protestant denominations were extended an invitation.
"Collectively, the mainline protestant denominations are the largest block of Iowans of faith, and they were left out of the conversation today with the Vice President.”
Pew Research Center data backs up that claim. It says 77% of Iowans are Christian and of that group 30% are mainline protestant. 28% are evangelical while 18% are Catholic.
"If hearing from a variety of faith leaders had been allowed, the Vice President would have learned that the vast majority of Iowa’s faith community does not plan to hold in-person gatherings any time soon," Ryan said.
This echoes a sentiment from 21 denominational faith leaders in Iowa who said earlier in the week, they would refrain from holding in-person gatherings for the time being.
Friday, May 08, 2020
Birx: Coronavirus protests are ‘devastatingly worrisome’
Mark J. Terrill, AP
By WILLIAM CUMMINGS, USA TODAY
Posted May 5, 2020 at 6:00 PM
Dr. Deborah Birx warned that protestors who carry an infection home to their grandmother or grandfather would feel guilty for the rest of their lives.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, expressed concern Sunday about the lack of social distancing at protests and rallies against stay-at-home orders.
“It’s devastatingly worrisome to me, personally, because if they go home and infect their grandmother or their grandfather who has a comorbid condition, and they have a serious or a very unfortunate outcome, they will feel guilty for the rest of our lives. So, we need to protect each other at the same time we’re voicing our discontent,” Birx said when asked on Fox News about demonstrators crowding into the state capitol in Michigan last week.
Similar protests have taken place across the country against restrictive measures aimed at containing the spread of the virus, and many states have begun to reopen amid political and economic pressure.