Pope may visit Greek island to highlight refugees' plight

2:14 p.m. April 5

by NICOLE WINFIELD and ELENA BECATOROS / The Associated Press


VATICAN CITY

Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, will visit the Greek island of Lesbos next week to highlight the plight of refugees, the Greek government said, as refugees and other migrants are being deported back to Turkey under the European Union's controversial program to ease Europe's migrant problem.

Under the EU's deal with Turkey reached last month, those arriving on Greek islands from March 20 onwards who do not apply for asylum in Greece or whose application is rejected or deemed inadmissible will be deported back to Turkey. For every Syrian returned to Turkey, another Syrian there will be relocated to a European country.

Associated Press

A migrant child looks out behind a wire fence of a refugee camp in the western Athens' suburb of Schisto, Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey. Under the deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece will be returned to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if they make an asylum claim that is rejected. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)


But after the initial return of 202 people Monday from the islands of Lesbos and Chios, most of the roughly 4,000 people earmarked for deportation were submitting asylum applications, leading to delays in the system.

No deportations were carried out Tuesday, and a Turkish interior ministry official said no further returns were expected until Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Associated Press

Refugee children walk along railway tracks in a makeshift camp at Idomeni border station on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia, photographed from the Macedonian side of the border line, Monday, April 4, 2016. The European plan to send migrants from Greece back to Turkey is set to be implemented starting today. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)


Francis, the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, has been outspoken about Europe's moral obligation to welcome refugees and his visit to Greece will likely embarrass EU leaders already under fire from human rights groups over the deportations.

The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, the decision-making body of the Greek church, said Francis had asked to come to highlight the plight of refugees. It said the request had been accepted and the island of Lesbos suggested, adding it had also extended an invitation to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, to visit the island on the same day.

Associated Press

Children play behind the fence, in a makeshift camp at Idomeni border station on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia, photographed from the Macedonian side of the border line Monday, April 4, 2016. The European Union plan to contain the refugee crisis took a major step on Monday with the returns to Turkey of 202 migrants and refugees who had not applied for asylum in Greece. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)



The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate confirmed Bartholomew would visit the island.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Tuesday that no decision had been made but in an email to The Associated Press he said "I don't deny that there are contacts about a possible trip."

Associated Press

A migrant grimaces on the ground after a scuffle with police, during road blockade at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 4, 2016. A plan to send back migrants from Greece to Turkey sparked demonstrations by local residents in both countries days before the deal brokered by the European Union is set to be implemented. (AP Photo/Amel Emric)


The Greek government issued a note saying the pope and patriarch would be visiting Lesbos on April 14-15 along with Athens Archbishop Ieronymos, and that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras would join them.

Francis has made the plight of migrants a priority of his three-year pontificate, insisting in particular that Europe and other countries open their doors and hearts to people fleeing persecution and poverty.

Associated Press

A Greek coast guard and police officer secure the area as migrants are being loaded on a ferry at the port of Mytilini in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey. Under heavy security, the first 135 migrants were being escorted onto the boats as dawn broke Monday by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex, to nearby ports on the Turkish coast, under the plan which has been strongly criticized by human rights groups.(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)


He told the Vatican's diplomatic corps in January that Europe had the means to welcome refugees without compromising its security or culture and that the continent bore the "moral responsibility" to care for others who have fled their homes to seek a better life.

Europe's deal with Turkey has come under fierce criticism from human rights groups and aid organizations, who accuse European countries of ignoring their commitments to protect vulnerable refugees.

Associated Press

Migrants shout slogans during a road blockade at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 4, 2016. A plan to send back migrants from Greece to Turkey sparked demonstrations by local residents in both countries days before the deal brokered by the European Union is set to be implemented. (AP Photo/Amel Emric)


Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe director at Human Rights Watch, said Monday that trying to close the Aegean migration route by shipping people "back to uncertain fates in Turkey" would just make them seek potentially more dangerous and expensive ways to reach the EU.


"This whole deal involves throwing human beings down legal loopholes," she said. "Turkey is not a safe country, and rights on paper are not the same as rights in practice."

Associated Press

Migrants, most of them from Pakistan, protest against the EU- Turkey deal about migration inside the entrance of Moria camp in the Greek island of Lesbos on Tuesday, April 5, 2016. Authorities in Greece have paused deportations to Turkey and acknowledged that most migrants and refugees detained on the islands have applied for asylum. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)


The deal and its accompanied closing of land borders to migrants have also led to more than 52,000 people being stranded in Greece.

European officials have billed the deal as the only way to deter people from risking the dangerous if brief sea journey from the Turkish coast to Greek islands.

Associated Press

Migrants most of them from Pakistan protest against the EU- Turkey deal about migration, inside the entrance of Moria camp in the Greek island of Lesbos on Tuesday, April 5, 2016. Authorities in Greece have paused deportations to Turkey and acknowledged that most migrants and refugees detained on the islands have applied for asylum. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)


Maria Stavropoulou, director of Greece's Asylum Service, told state TV that some 3,000 people held in deportation camps on the islands are seeking asylum, with the application process to formally start by the end of the week.

Asylum applications typically take about three months to process, she said, but would be "considerably faster" for those held in detention.

"There will be a difficult few months ahead," Stavropoulou said. "We are dealing with people who speak 70 different languages and many have traveled to Greece without papers because they are escaping war."

Only 30 of 400 migration officers from other EU countries have arrived in Greece so far, Stavropoulou said, while additional locally hired staff would take "several months" to train and integrate into the Asylum Service.


___


Becatoros reported from Athens. Ayse Wieting in Istanbul contributed.


___


Online:


Greek Asylum Service: http://asylo.gov.gr/

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Big Seed: How The Industry Turned From Small-Town Firms To Global Giants

April 6, 20165:07 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

DAN CHARLES



Seed labels from the J.C. Robinson Seed Co.Courtesy of Rob-See-Co

Most food, if we trace it back far enough, began as a seed. And the business of supplying those seeds to farmers has been transformed over the past half-century. Small-town companies have given way to global giants.

A new round of industry consolidation is now underway. Multibillion-dollar mergers are in progress, or under discussion, that could put more than half of global seed sales in the hands of three companies.

If there's anyone who can trace the course of this transformation, and explain what drove it, it's Ed Robinson.

For most of his life, Robinson ran the family business: the J.C. Robinson Seed Co. of Waterloo, Neb. He's 92 years old now, feisty and full of opinions, especially about the seed business.

"Here are two kernels of corn," he says, holding them up for me to inspect. "What the seed industry does is sell what's inside this kernel. And the only way that the farmer knows what's in there, is if he trusts the person who sold it!"

Seeds, with their hidden potential, are the lifeblood of agriculture, but the companies that sold them to farmers didn't always attract much attention.
There used to be hundreds of family-run companies just like J.C. Robinson scattered across the Midwest.

"They were a band of wonderful people," Robinson says.

Much of the work was mundane. They grew vegetables or grain, then collected the seeds carefully, dried them, sorted them and sold them to farmers.

There was, of course, competition among them. It was a race to create ever-more-productive seeds using plant breeding, cross-pollinating selected plants and selecting the best offspring.

The big companies did their breeding in-house. But smaller companies had other sources of top varieties, such as the breeding programs of universities. Those seeds were free for anyone to use.

One product of Iowa State University, a type of corn called B73, was so good that everybody used it. Its offspring had a distinctive look, with leaves pointing toward the sky.

"You could see it driving down the road," says Steve Pike, who owned part of Fontanelle Seed Co. in Fremont, Neb. "Probably 60 percent of the corn at one time got to be that upright leaf."

Rob-See-Co seeds, from an earlier era.Courtesy of Rob-See-Co

In 1970, J.C. Robinson partnered with several other seed companies and formed a group called Golden Harvest. It became one of the top five sellers of corn seed in the country. In the 1990s, J.C. Robinson built a big new seed processing plant and enlarged its headquarters in Waterloo.

And right about that time, the world changed.

Chemical companies like Monsanto found a way to genetically engineer crops. They inserted new genes into corn and soybeans, giving plants the power to kill insects, or survive weedkillers.

And farmers wanted those genes. Traditional seed companies, if they wanted to stay competitive, had to license those genes from their inventors. Many worried about being cut off from this new technology.

In 1998, Monsanto and other biotech companies started trying to buy some of the biggest seed companies outright. It gave them more control over an increasingly lucrative business.

Ed Robinson's son Rob says an offer arrived to buy Golden Harvest. "It was an amount beyond belief," he says. "I think it was $500 million."

Ed Robinson (right) in 1948. He is speaking to Herb Johnson, who was in charge of shipping for the J.C. Robinson Seed Co.Courtesy of Rob-See-Co

The potential buyer — Robinson won't say which company — arrived for a meeting accompanied by advisers. They sat down with all five Golden Harvest partners — old seed company families.

"One of their advisers was sitting next to Dad," Rob Robinson says. "And this adviser was chanting '$500 million!' to the group of owners sitting there. It wasn't anything we'd experienced before."

That deal didn't go through. But in 2004, Golden Harvest agreed to be acquired by a Swiss-based company — Syngenta — for just under $200 million.

Rob Robinson has mixed feelings about the deal. "Originally, I regretted it. I felt that we needed to do it, for the future of the company. But I had sons ... "

Robinson stops midsentence, unable for a moment to keep talking.

He gathers himself. "I think the only regret is that we had another generation ready to come into the business," he says.

The big corn seed facility remains in Waterloo, and it's busy. But the top executives who decide its fate are now in Syngenta's headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. And soon, they may be sitting in Beijing. Syngenta has struck a deal to be acquired by Chem China, a state-owned enterprise there.

Meanwhile, other seed and pesticide companies are getting bigger, too. DuPont and Dow are merging. There are reports that Monsanto is in talks to buy either Bayer or BASF.

Ed Robinson, who ran the J.C. Robinson Seed Co. for 58 years, with his son Rob Robinson (left).Dan Charles/NPR

If the deals go through, it's estimated that three of these companies will control more than half of global seed sales.

Ed Robinson doesn't like it at all. "I wish the old-fashioned seed business were back," he says. "I think the farmer would be better off, and the U.S. would be better off."

But his son, Rob Robinson, says the changes were probably necessary. Without those big companies, he says, we wouldn't have the new technology.

"The dollars that it takes today, the investment it takes to do biotech research is massive, and difficult for an independent seed company like the J.C. Robinson Seed Co. to afford," he says.

But he has been able to resurrect one small piece of that old-fashioned world.

He's started a small but growing seed company, using the original name that his great-grandfather used: Rob-See-Co. Robinson says the company tries to operate in a way that takes farmers back to a less complicated time. "We're kind of a throwback. We're from a simpler world," he says.

He's also able to work with his two sons.

But he couldn't go back completely to the old times. He's not breeding his own new varieties and corn hybrids. The seeds he sells are supplied by Syngenta.

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Italian Vacation Island Taken ‘Hostage’ by Illegal Immigrants

LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty

by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.

5 Apr 2016

A day-long protest by immigrants Monday on the Italian resort island of Sardinia paralyzed city traffic in the capital city of Cagliari, as Eritrean and Somali protesters sat or lay down in the streets preventing any flow of traffic.

“Cagliari is hostage to illegal immigrants,” said center-right local politician, Daniele Caruso. “Yet another street protest forces us to confront a public policy problem that can no longer be underrated.”

A group of some 100 young migrants began marching through the city protesting around noon Monday, and then occupied the city’s main square for nearly seven hours.

Meanwhile, a group of volunteers handed out water bottles to the protesters, escorted by police in riot gear. The protesters were part of the 661 migrants who were taken to the port of Cagliari after being rescued off the Libyan coast last month.

On Monday evening, after a lengthy mediation, police officials finally managed to convince the migrants to desist. The migrants were then transported on buses back to the Pirri hotel on the outskirts of Cagliari, which has been turned into a makeshift immigrant shelter and where the migrants have been residing for several weeks.

The migrants are demanding to leave the island, which is roughly the size of New Hampshire, and to be taken elsewhere, since the majority would like to be able to continue traveling north into Europe. Many have refused to participate in identification procedures for fear of not being able to leave Sardinia.

Local and national politicians are now speaking of a real threat to public order and a crisis situation in Sardinia, requiring immediate intervention.

The Leader of Italy’s Northern League, Matteo Salvini, did not mince words. “I am sick and tired of these immigrants,” he said. “They want to leave, so let’s weigh them and ship them back home.”

Daniele Caruso called for the prefect to restore public order and guarantee the security of citizens, accusing the migrants of “acting outside the rules” that require respect for citizens and full cooperation with officials.

“Cagliari is at the mercy of immigrants, or so-called refugees” Caruso added.

Over the past years, most African migrants moving north have sought to cross the strait of Sicily and land at the nearest Italian ports, such as the islands of Sicily, Pantelleria and Lampedusa, in between the African and Sicilian coasts.

Due to mounting pressure on infrastructure and services, however, the Italian government devised a scheme to multiply the ports of entry for rescued migrants, turning to other regions of southern Italy. Moving beyond the easily reachable ports, they began transporting rescued migrants elsewhere, such as Sardinia.

Last August, migrants in Cagliari protested delays in paperwork, demanding they be allowed to leave Sardinia, and several even began a hunger strike. A large number of Eritrean migrants called for the right to leave the island in order to join friends and relatives in other parts of Italy.

Many are blaming Sardinia’s current woes on the immigration policy of the center-left government of Matteo Renzi.

Salvatore Deidda, the regional spokesman for the Fratelli d’Italiagroup, denounced the migrant reception policy of the Renzi government, which he called “inhuman and bankrupt.”

The latest protest, Deidda said, “is proof that of what we have been saying for some time, namely that Sardinia is not a place for refugees and immigrants.”

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Pope Doubles Down, Pushes Zika Virus Birth Control Psyop As Necessary “Lesser Evil”

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

By Bernie Suarez

Once again, acting as the bridging voice between the global elite’s United Nations agenda and his followers in the Catholic community, Pope Francis has ignored the actual statistics and what the community of doctors outside of the “Brazilian Ministry of Health” are saying regarding the lack of evidence linking the Zika virus to microcephaly. Instead, the pope recently put out statements endorsing the birth control method of avoidance, claiming that “avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil” in light of the Zika virus storyline which has been created by those pushing the global forced vaccination and depopulation agenda. All with the help, of course, of the mass media.

Now that a few weeks have passed since the mainstream media ran with the 2-dimensional, linear, fake-reality, Zika virus stories claiming a direct and certain link to microcephaly, those in the critical thinking medical community agree, if nothing else, on the observable fact that there is no evidence of any direct link between the Zika virus and microcephaly. What there is evidence of, is that villages which were sprayed heavily with pesticide chemicals, where GMO mosquitoes were released and villages whose drinking water was spiked with Monsanto-backed chemical poisons are the villages experiencing the highest incidence of babies born with microcephaly.

As has been repeatedly pointed out by researchers, doctors and those covering this story for the past several weeks, from a medical perspective we also know that the Zika virus generally doesn’t cause microcephaly because there is no mechanism or history to explain it. And we know that among other causes, chemical poisoning and imbalances do potentially cause the disorder and are associated with microcephaly. We also know (as they say in medicine) that “common things happen commonly”. Nature very rarely acts in a way outside of its normal pattern of behavior. The very nature of medicine and science is founded on these observable behaviors and often predictable results. We also know that whenever a scientist or doctor claims something that is not typically seen, that doctor, scientist or scientific body must prove their hypothesis with convincing evidence. No one is immune from the obligation to abide by the Scientific Method. It’s one of the key criteria that binds and thus ensures the integrity of scientific and medical claims. That evidence claimed by the establishment and medical “authorities” in Brazil and at the global level, has not been introduced. Zika virus is not proven to be linked as the primary cause of microcephaly. This is the most important point regarding the recent Zika virus engineered scare.

Subsequently, what we are now seeing is a slow systematic and often repeated disregard of the 3-dimensional reality that I wrote about recently, so that an engineered artificial 2-dimensional reality based narrative can be perpetuated. This artificial narrative is a dangerous sign of the direction humanity is headed and I argue is the much bigger story here.

The propaganda coming from the pope shouldn’t surprise anyone who understands how this artificial reality is now being rolled out on the masses on a daily basis and is a symptom of a greater problem. In this example, the pope is simply contributing to the synthetic 2-dimensional reality where the general public is presented with lies and disinformation designed to look feel and smell real, while they push for whatever agenda is desired. This significant doubling down by the pope on global government U.N. propaganda at the expense of science and reason is another reminder that there is no reason to believe anything put out by the lying and controlled mainstream media and their usual mouthpieces that include people like the pope among others.

As already stated, even if 100 percent proof of what exactly has caused the microcephaly in newborns has not been reached, one thing is for certain – there is no evidence that directly links the Zika virus to microcephaly.

Careful to not let reality get in the way of the escalating current fictional narrative aimed at pushing the global agenda to strip away all medical freedoms in the name of an epidemic or pandemic, the pope is carrying on with claims that happen to sound just like the claims engineered by the political authorities and mainstream media. Is anyone surprised?

Surely the pope is aware of the scientific reality, nevertheless he is once again going along with the global political narrative, as he has so often in the past, selling Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 and the coming global “sustainable” order as a type of virtue that his followers should heed to.

Another Climate Alarmist Admits Real Motive Behind Warming Scare

EDITORIALS

The climate alarmists want the public to think they are trying to avoid a burnt world, but what they really want is something altogether different. (AP)

3/29/2016


Fraud: While the global warming alarmists have done a good job of spreading fright, they haven’t been so good at hiding their real motivation. Yet another one has slipped up and revealed the catalyst driving the climate scare.

We have been told now for almost three decades that man has to change his ways or his fossil-fuel emissions will scorch Earth with catastrophic warming. Scientists, politicians and activists have maintained the narrative that their concern is only about caring for our planet and its inhabitants. But this is simply not true. The narrative is a ruse. They are after something entirely different.


If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.

Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:


“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

Mad as they are, Edenhofer’s comments are nevertheless consistent with other alarmists who have spilled the movement’s dirty secret. Last year, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a similar statement.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said in anticipation of last year’s Paris climate summit.

“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

The plan is to allow Third World countries to emit as much carbon dioxide as they wish — because, as Edenhofer said, “in order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas” — while at the same time restricting emissions in advanced nations. This will, of course, choke economic growth in developed nations, but they deserve that fate as they “have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community,” he said. The fanaticism runs so deep that one professor has even suggested that we need to plunge ourselves into a depression to fight global warming.

Perhaps Naomi Klein summed up best what the warming the fuss is all about in her book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.”

“What if global warming isn’t only a crisis?” Klein asks in a preview of a documentary inspired by her book. “What if it’s the best chance we’re ever going to get to build a better world?”

In her mind, the world has to “change, or be changed” because an “economic system” — meaning free-market capitalism — has caused environmental “wreckage.”

This is how the global warming alarmist community thinks. It wants to frighten, intimidate and then assume command. It needs a “crisis” to take advantage of, a hobgoblin to menace the people, so that they will beg for protection from the imaginary threat. The alarmists’ “better world” is one in which they rule a global welfare state. They’ve admitted this themselves.

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Methodists and pope to meet at launch of new ecumenical office

By agency reporter
APRIL 4, 2016


Pope Francis and senior Methodist representatives from around the world will take part in a series of events to mark the opening of the new Methodist Ecumenical Office in Rome.

Attendees at the events, taking place between 5-7 April 5th 2016, include representatives from the Vatican, the Church of England, the World Methodist Council, the United Methodist Church and the Methodist Church in Britain.

World Methodist Council President, Bishop Paulo Lockmann, Vice-President Gillian Kingston and General Secretary Bishop Ivan Abrahams, the Rev Gareth J Powell, Secretary of the Methodist Conference, other representatives from the Methodist Church in Britain, Deacon Alessandra Trotta President of the Methodist Churches in Italy, representatives of the European Methodist Council, the United Methodist Church and The Wesley (Rome) will be present.

A service of dedication and the opening of the centre at Ponte Sant` Angelo will be attended by representatives of the Vatican, Archbishop David Moxon, the Director of the Anglican Centre and the representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Rome, members of the diplomatic corps and other churches in Rome.

Next Thursday the Methodist delegation will be received by Pope Francis in a private audience at the Vatican followed by a meeting with members of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The Rev Dr Tim Macquiban, Director of the Methodist Ecumenical Office in Rome, said: "We ask you to hold the ecumenical work of the office in your prayers at this important stage of its development.

"This initiative gives Methodists worldwide the opportunity to contribute in a continuing ecumenical dialogue, promoting ecumenical understanding through the likes of educational programmes."

* The Methodist Church in Britain http://www.methodist.org.uk/

[Ekk/4]

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WH Censors French President Saying 'ISLAMIST Terrorism'

....

Ben Graham | April 1, 2016 11:13am ET

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False Revival and THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST coming to America!

End-Times-Prophecy

Published on Apr 3, 2016

Professed Christians are rising up in America and uniting with the political domain to "take control of America". Revelation 13 says this is the image of the beast. An image of the Papacy!

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Prosecuting climate chaos skeptics with RICO

Prosecuting climate chaos skeptics with RICO: Prosecuting climate chaos skeptics with RICO, Al Gore, Torquemada Whitehouse, Democrat AGs threaten to silence and bankrupt skeptics

Panama Papers: A massive document leak reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance

Updated by Matthew Yglesias on April 3, 2016, 9:30 p.m. ET 

@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com


J

Mossack Fonseca is not a household name, but the Panamanian law firm has long been well known to the global financial and political elite, and thanks to a massive 2.6 terabyte leak of its confidential papers to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists it's about to become much better known. A huge team ofhundreds of journalists is pouring over the documents they are calling the Panama Papers.

The firm's operations are diverse and international in scope, but they originate in a single specialty — helping foreigners set up Panamanian shell companies to hold financial assets while obscuring the identities of their real owners. Since its founding in 1977, it's expanded its interests outside of Panama to include over 40 offices worldwide, helping a global client base to work with shell companies not just in Panama but also the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, and other notorious tax havens around the world.


The documents provide details on some shocking acts of corruption in Russia, hint at scandalous goings-on in a range of developing nations, and may prompt a political crisis in Iceland.

But they also offer the most granular look ever at a banal reality that's long been hiding in plain sight. Even as the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations have engaged in increasingly complex and intensive efforts at international cooperation to smooth the wheels of global commerce, they have willfully chosen to allow the wealthiest members of Western society to shield their financial assets from taxation (and in many cases divorce or bankruptcy settlement) by taking advantage of shell companies and tax havens.

If Panama or the Cayman Islands were acting to undermine the integrity of the global pharmaceutical patent system, the United States would stop them. But political elite of powerful western nations has notacted to stop relatively puny Caribbean nations from undermining the integrity of the global tax system — largely because western economic elites don't want them to.
What's a shell company? Why would someone want one?

Sometimes a person or a well-known company or institution wants to buy things or own assets in a way that obscures who the real buyer is.

The typical reason for this is a kind of routine corporate secrecy. Apple, for example, appears to have created a shell company called SixtyEight Research that journalists believe to be a front for its interest in building a car. Since Apple happens to be the most-covered company on the planet this hasn't been incredible effective and when SixtyEight Research staff showed up at an auto industry conference everybody noticed.


But in general, companies don't like to tip their hand to what they are doing and the use of shell companies to undertake not-ready-for-public-announcement projects can be a useful tool.

Shell companies are often sometimes used for simple privacy reasons. Real estate transactions, for example, are generally a matter of public record. So an athlete, actor, or other celebrity who wants to buy a house without his name and address ending up in the papers might want to pay a lawyer to set up a shell company to do the purchasing.
Okay, but how about the shady stuff?

As is generally the case in life, secrecy can have illegitimate purposes as well. This is particularly true for shell companies set up in international centers of banking secrecy that offer a level of anonymity and obscurity that goes beyond simply making it hard to look up the real owner's name online.

Your soon-to-be-ex-wife cannot seize half of the money in an account that she and her lawyers don't know exists and can't prove that you own, for example. Nor can your creditors seize such an account in a bankruptcy proceeding. Nor can the government levy estate taxes on it when you die and pass it on to your kids. In all those circumstances, a Panamanian company that you secretly control and that holds stocks, bonds, and other financial assets on your behalf could be the ideal vehicle.

By the same token, if you have made a bunch of money illegally (taking bribes, trafficking drugs, etc.) you need to do something with the money that won't attract the attention of the authorities or the media. A secret offshore shell company is perfect. Not only does it help you avoid scrutiny in real time, but if you are found out its assets can't be taken from you if you have to flee the jurisdiction or even serve jail time.

But even though various criminal money-laundering schemes are the sexiest possible use of shell companies, the day-to-day tax dodging is what really pays the bills. As a manager of offshore bank accounts told me years ago, "people think of banking secrecy as all about terrorists and drug smugglers, but the truth is there are a lot of rich people who don't want to pay taxes." And the system persists because there are a lot of politicians in the west who don't particularly want to make them.
What do the Panama Papers show?

As you would imagine, there is quite a lot in the 2.6 terabytes. Here are a few of the highlights that the team found, with links to the full stories where you can read the details:
Vladimir Putin's inner circle appears to control about $2 billion worth of offshore assets.
The Prime Minister of Icelandsecretly owned the debt of failed Icelandic banks while he was involved in political negotiations over their fate.
The family of Pakistan's prime minister owns millions of dollars worth of real estate via offshore accounts.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko pledged to sell his Ukrainian business interests during his campaign, but appears instead to have transferred them to an offshore company he controls.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has a full profile of political figures and their relatives named in the Panama Papers for your reading pleasure.

But though political corruption is fun and newsy, the document dump also features a leaked memorandum from a Mossack Fonseca partner revealing the more boring truth that "Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes."
How much money is there in offshore tax havens?

A big part of the idea, of course, is to make it hard for anyone to know for sure.

But Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor at UC Berkley, has made the most detailed study of the question for his book The Hidden Wealth of Nations and estimates that it totals at least $7.6 trillion. That's upwards of 8 percent of all the world's financial wealth, and it's growing fast. Zucman estimates that offshore wealth has surged about 25 percent over the past five years.

Much of that reflects "new money" from China and other developing nations whose citizens to an extent have legitimate fears about political stability and the rule of law.

But some of it is simple avarice. The name of Ian Cameron, the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, shows up in the Panama Papers, for example. Mossack Fonseca helped him set up his investment company Blairmore Holdings (named after his family's ancestral country estate) in the British Virgin Islands where, marketing material assured investors, the company "will not be subject to United Kingdom corporation tax or income tax on its profits."

This particular kind of move is perfectly legal and doesn't even involve any secrecy. It is entirely typical for investment companies whose employees all work or reside in New York, London, or Connecticut to be domiciled for tax purposes in someplace like the Cayman Islands. Since these companies don't own much in the way of physical assets, they can be officially located anywhere in the world and naturally choose to locate in jurisdictions where they won't need to pay taxes.
Why doesn't anyone do anything about this?

To an extent, things have been done.

First the war on drugs, and then more recently the war on terror, led to meaningful political pressure on countries around the world to alter their banking practices so as to reduce global money-laundering. More recently, the European Union hassuccessfully pressured Switzerland to change its lawsto make it easier for the EU to catch people engaged in criminal tax evasion.

But there's a big difference between tax evasion — illegally refusing to pay taxes that you owe, and then taking advantage of secret accounts to try to hide the money and get away with it — and tax avoidance, which is hiring clever people to help you find and exploit legal loopholes to minimize your tax bill.

Incorporating your hedge fund in a country with no corporate income tax even though all your fund's employees and investors live in the United States is perfectly legal. So is, in most cases, setting up a Panamanian shell company to own and manage most of your family's fortune.

Tax avoidance is an inevitable feature of any tax system, but the reason this particular form of avoidance grows and grows without bounds is that powerful politicians in powerful countries have chosen to let it happen. As the global economy has become more and more deeply integrated, powerful countries have created economic "rules of the road" that foreign countries and multinational corporations must follow in order to gain lucrative market access.

Establishing some kind of minimum global standard of taxation of corporate and investment income hasn't been done because it hasn't been a political priority. In the United States, in particular, the Republican Party fights quite hard for the view that high levels of taxation on rich people and investment income are economically ruinous so there isn't the kind of institutional mobilization that exists around drug trafficking or possible terrorism financing.

The leak of the Panama Papers is significant in part because of the specific information they contain, but more broadly because they draw attention to what "everyone knows" and may put public pressure on the powers that be to do something about it.

Source

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The United States of America is a Satanist Country

By Katherine Frisk on March 29, 2016

This is Not a Movie

by Katherine Frisk

Some time ago, Putin described the US as being Satanist. In Who’s ‘godless’ now? Russia says it’s U.S., Putin is quoted as saying:

“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”

Most people in the West did not take him seriously. Also note that being “godless” in the eyes of Russians, does not only apply to Christians. Russia has an enviable tolerance for all religions, and both Islam and Buddhism are neither maligned nor persecuted. Putin opened the new Mosque in Moscow last year and the head of the Russian armed forces is a Buddhist. He was not talking of only Christian values.

Religious tolerance also means respect for other people’s belief system, and that does not include Puzzy Riots on altars, chopping down crucifixes in church yards, blowing up ancient Buddhist statues or chopping off the heads of Shiite Muslims because they refuse to join the murderous Wahhabi Sunni faction.

So before we laugh at Putin and his statement, Agnostic, Atheist or whatever you may be, please understand that the point I am trying to get across is that you do not have to be religious at all, you do not even have to take sides, but if you look at the social, economic and political outcome of those who follow Satanism, covertly or openly, the fruits of this psychological mindset becomes evident.

If you are not religious, then at least ask yourself some serious questions about the society that you want to live in and recognize that Satanists take themselves very seriously and are just as fanatical about getting converts as some religious orders are. The more converts they manage to sway to their cause, the more they can move a whole society into believing that their social, economic and political dog-eat-dog world view is the correct one.

What’s Behind Our Moral Decline?

ADMINISTRATOR’S NOTE —




The brutally sad irony is while people, the vast foolish majority, delude themselves they are being more “free” and “exercising their rights and liberties,” and that our society is “making progress towards our ideals” in truth they have become enslaved unlike any other people on earth. Ever!


At least all the Jews, Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Latin’s who have been slaves in the past were not ignorant of their enslavement — today, what people think they know is the exact opposite of the truth — the more they turn from God and delude themselves of being “more free” the greater the slaves they become to the wiles and death of this world and its prince for a season, the devil.


Our great moral decline tracks identical on the downward spiral as our spiritual decline leading to our demise because we choose to follow lies, rather than inclining our ears, our hearts, our minds, our souls, to the inerrant word of God.


~ Ken Pullen, A Crooked Path, Friday, April 1st, 2016





What’s Behind Our Moral Decline?

by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam





One does not have to be a prude to conclude that our country is suffering a serious moral decline. Our rulers and law enforcement agencies seem powerless to cope with it. Campaigns to check it seem vain. The FBI warned us again and again that the alarming rate of this downward trend would spell ruin for America if not checked soon. But what most people fail to realize is that behind this moral decline there is a spiritual decline. America has departed from God and His Word.



Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us how the heathen got that way. Romans 1:21-22 says: “When they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools,” and the verses that follow tell how God finally had to “give them up” to “uncleanness” and “vile affections”–all because “they did not like [wish] to retain God in their knowledge” (Ver. 28).



St. Paul further describes them in Ephesians 4:17-19, as walking “in the vanity of their mind, havingthe understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who being past feeling [conscience] have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” This, sad to say, is an accurate description of increasing numbers in America today. They are throwing off restraint and going after uncleanness “with greediness.”



But this is not liberty, it is enslavement. It is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. It does not indicate superior intelligence, but grossest ignorance, and is the result of alienation from God.



How much better off are those who have come to know God through Christ! Of these the Apostle says:



“And you, who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled, in the body of His flesh, through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight” (Colossians 1:21-22).

Source

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Life Among the Ruins

The Temple of Baal, in Palmyra, Syria, in 2011. In 2015 it was razed by the Islamic State.

YIN BOGU / XINHUA PRESS, VIA CORBIS

By KANISHK THAROOR
MARCH 19, 2016


NEXT month, the Temple of Baal will come to Times Square. Reproductions of the 50-foot arch that formed the temple’s entrance are to be installed in New York and in London, a tribute to the 2,000-year-old structure that the Islamic State destroyed last yearin the Syrian town of Palmyra. The group’s rampage through Palmyra, a city that reached its peak in the second and third century A.D., enraged the world, spurring scholars and conservationists into action. Numerous nongovernmental organizations are now cataloging and mapping damaged cultural heritage sites in the region.

It will be uncanny and thrilling to see this arch from an ancient desert civilization set against the bright lights of New York. Unfortunately, facsimiles can achieve only so much. Denuded of people, stripped of the rich social contexts in which they were once embedded, antiquities appear just as evidence of the grandeur of the past, the accomplishments of another place in another time. But what did these assemblages of stone mean to the modern Iraqis and Syrians who lived with them?

For Salam al-Kuntar, a Syrian archaeologist who works at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the loss of the Temple of Baal was deeply personal. “I have a special love for Palmyra because the Temple of Baal is where my mother was born,” she said.

Ms. Kuntar’s grandfather was a policeman in Palmyra when its Roman-era ruins were inhabited. Well into the 20th century, generations of Palmyrenes made their homes in the shade of millenniums-old columns. The locals taught Ms. Kuntar’s grandmother — who was a young bride when she arrived in Palmyra — how to cook and how to bake bread.

Her daughter was among the last generation born inside the ancient city. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, French colonial authorities cleared the area of its inhabitants and dismantled their mud-brick house. That paved the way for the archaeological exploration and preservation of the site, but it also definitively ended ancient Palmyra’s habitation as well as the use of the Temple of Baal, which over the centuries had transformed into a Byzantine church, then a mosque, before eventually becoming part of the village where Ms. Kuntar’s mother was born.

A picture taken in March 2014 shows the iconic arched gate in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. The Islamic State destroyed it in 2015.
JOSEPH EID / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES


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Sunday as a Mark of Christian Unity and a Call to Holiness

Scott Brill


Growing up in an unchurched family in the 1960s & 70s, for me Sunday was mostly just a day to sleep in, eat donuts and watch football (and the dreaded Sunday evening, when I would have to prepare to go back to school). But despite being just a kid, I was aware that some of my friends had a different experience of the day. They were the “hard core” religious kids, who went to church in the mornings and spent the day mostly with their families. Even though as a kid I didn’t really grasp it at the time, they represented a pretty wide spectrum of Protestants and Catholics. And I suppose their unity (they all went to church) was a stronger sign to me than their ecclesiological differences (of which I had absolutely no comprehension).

My faith awakening in college through an Evangelical parachurch ministry (for which I still work) gave me my first introduction to the place of Sunday in the development of the Christian life. It was at that point in my life that I first began to attend church regularly and be challenged to set aside the day for rest, reflection, relationships, and an opportunity to trust God more with my studies. Though our student fellowship was limited in its expression of the whole Church (essentially just Protestants), there was a unifying testimony to our fellow students because of our decision together to try to honor the Lord’s Day. This practice continued to influence my life through early years of ministry and marriage and then shaped decisions we made as we raised our children.

When my oldest daughter got to college, and became involved in the same parachurch ministry, she had an even deeper experience of Sunday as a mark of Christian unity. In the first place, the student fellowship had a much fuller representation of the Church (now including a number of Catholic and a few Orthodox students). Secondly, the leaders of the group made a more intentional commitment to honoring Sundays, refraining from studying and investing heavily on that day in relationships with both Christian and non-Christian students. Now having graduated from college, she describes it as one of the most formative experiences of her life at university, both in terms of deepening her dependence on God and in the witness of her and her fellowleaders to their friends.

In an address during this January’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity to an ecumenical colloquium of religious men and women, Pope Francis said the following: “There is no unity without holiness of life. Religious life helps us to be aware of the call addressed to all the baptized: the call to holiness of life, which is the only true path to unity. It is evidenced with incisive words in the Conciliar Decree Unitatis Redintegratio: ‘May all the faithful remember that, the more they promote, rather live in practice the unity of Christians, the more they will take care to live a life in greater conformity with the Gospel. In fact, the closer their communion is with the Father, with the Word and with the Holy Spirit, the more profoundly and easily they will be able to render mutual fraternity.’”

Though he was speaking specifically to men and women religious and their call to holiness, he does point beyond them to the call to holiness of all Christians and the sign of unity that our holiness presents to those still not among “the baptized”. As I reflect on those words, it strikes me that our Sunday practices–across the denominational spectrum–are an important part of the way that all of us “take care to live a life in greater conformity to the Gospel.” I believe that my own spiritual disciplines of weekly worship, refraining from work for more rest and reflection, and using Sunday as a day to be more intentional about investing in relationships to draw me into closer communion with God, as well as deepen my affection for my brothers and sisters who I am still not fully “in communion” with. I also believe that our communal Sunday practices are a sign of unity (something we share as fellow believers) that what unites us is stronger and more profound than what divides us.

But there are challenges that remain in this Sunday “sign” of our unity in Christ. Christ’s Church is still not fully one, as he prayed for in John 17. And to the world we can appear to be walled off from one another as believers in our own church communities with our own distinct dogmas and practices. At the same time, within the communities of believers even Sunday participation in worship services is diminishing, and the influence of the outside culture, which sees all days of the week as essentially the same, is eroding those other Sunday practices.

So what are practical steps that we can take to reach across our Christian divisions: to encourage one another, to stand together in our keeping of the Lord’s Day, and to “spur one another on to love and to [these] good works” (Heb. 10:24)? At the very least, we must not give up hope in the power of God to unite our witness. In my own tradition there is a preface prayer during the Eucharist that reminds all those gathered around the table that it was Jesus “who on this day (emphasis added) overcame death and the grave, and by his glorious resurrection opened to us the way of everlasting life.” It is indeed from this day and on this day that we draw on the hope of the resurrection and on the power of the One who raised Jesus from the dead to unite our witness to him.

Scott Brill is Co-Director & Founding Fellow: Institute for Christian Unity.

Source

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Ready Or Not?

Dave Westbrook

March 1 2016

Like so many of you, I’ve been watching the recent prophetic developments including the rapidly increasing influence and in-roads of the Papacy – truly one of the more impressive historic and prophetic developments of our time.

And yet, this should not come as a surprise to Seventh-day Adventists, who have long held that the Bible teaches a resurgence of this power, and that the world will “wonder after the beast…” (Revelation 13:3).

These developments have also provided striking reminders of the accuracy of what we’ve read about in the Spirit of Prophecy regarding end time events. It reminds me of hearing someone say a few years ago that the book Great Controversy, which has embarrassed some SDA’s, would prove to be so accurate that in the end, those same people would be embarrassed by their once lack of faith in it.

Well with the things we’re witnessing, we certainly see prophecy being fulfilled with striking accuracy.

But amidst all the discussion, the many comments from my fellow believers about the rising of the beast power and the reminders of her sins, I feel something is not being emphasized enough.

Lately, I find myself thinking more and more about the importance of practical godliness. I’m talking about real depth of character. In fact, let me be more honest – not just talking, but rather I find myself asking: “do I have it?” – The character of Christ?

It seems to me, an understanding of end time events should most of all cause us to ask the deeper questions about our own personal Christian experience.

Having a knowledge of prophecy is not enough. Please don’t misunderstand me, however. I’m not suggesting it’s not important to understand prophecy. Jesus Himself said, “When ye see these things, then KNOW…”. So knowing the times by the signs of the times is important, yes – but not enough.

God wants us to go even farther than that, and ask – what decisions must I make and what new actions should I take – in light of what I see happening in the world around me?

Is my family ready? Since world events point to the nearness of our Lord’s return, what do I need to change in my personal life to deepen my experience with Christ? What do I need to change in my personal life so that I’m in optimal spiritual shape to not just face what’s coming, but even more – to be a leader God can use during the most challenging moments in earth’s history? What do I need to change to have a bigger influence on my family?

And for me, questions like these always lead me to think about the practical plans God has laid out for us. Plans to live our lives quite differently from the rest of the world.

I’ll admit that I have a pragmatic bent. I don’t like the philosophical as much as I like simple, straightforward action steps – “What wouldst thou have me to DO?”

You see, I believe that God’s favorite ways to transform us, are often through real practical activities. He wants to reach us in ways that can’t be explained on a white board or a powerpoint presentation (not that there’s any thing wrong with those – I use them too :-).)

The heart work that needs to be done, can best be imparted through practical activities, and so God gives us tasks to do that provide the right experience by which we can grow and be transformed into His image. “The science of salvation cannot be explained, but it can be known by experience.” DA 495

And so He calls us to enter His training – which include things like moving our families out of the city and learning to live off the land, growing our own food in the garden, dealing with the obstacles and difficulties of a more rugged lifestyle, adopting a simpler diet, etc..

For a long time, I’ve felt compelled to focus more on practical things – the things God asks us to do. Partly because they resonate with me and partly because it seems they’re not getting enough attention.

So over the next few weeks, I’m going to be sharing some things that I’ve found helpful in re-focusing our attention to the deeper spiritual matters of the heart.

I invite you to come with me on this journey.

For sure, the end is near. The din and noise of the world is, it seems at times deafening. Even in the church, it seems there’s so much noise. But you and I are to be guided by that still small voice. Can you hear it?

“Everyone needs to have a personal experience in obtaining a knowledge of the will of God. We must individually hear Him speaking to the heart. When every other voice is hushed, and in quietness we wait before Him, the silence of the soul makes more distinct the voice of God. He bids us, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Ps. 46:10. Here alone can true rest be found. And this is the effectual preparation for all who labor for God. Amid the hurrying throng, and the strain of life’s intense activities, the soul that is thus refreshed will be surrounded with an atmosphere of light and peace. The life will breathe out fragrance, and will reveal a divine power that will reach men’s hearts.” DA 363

That’s what I want – how about you?

Talk again soon!

Dave Westbrook

Source

http://backtoenoch.org/ready-or-not/#sthash.HS1rSRf5.dpuf

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GLOBAL YOUTH SABBATH: ADVENTIST YOUNG ADULTS DO COMMUNITY SERVICE

March 21, 2016: “Over eight million Adventist Millennials took the church to the streets to occupy their communities with goodness … to lend aid to the needy [and] give genuine attention to those in the margin,” wrote Dr. Allan Martin in his summary of Global Youth Day. He is pastor of the Younger Generation congregation at the Arlington Seventh-day Adventist Church in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and convener of the Facebook group for Adventist youth and young adult ministry professionals.

The denomination’s official Web site for Global Youth Day included reports of nearly 10,000 projects on a map of the world. Each report included video or digital photos from a local participant or reporter. A total of 73 percent of these reports came from Latin America and the Caribbean, with two to seven percent each from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and the Pacific.

Many of the projects included demonstrations with parades of young people carrying signs. “Their placards stated their adamant sentiments about compassion and their intent to ‘be the sermon,'” Martin wrote. “Their actions validated their determination to be agents of grace and kindness.”

The projects included feeding the homeless, working with children from poor families, sharing appreciation with law enforcement and local civic leaders, donating blood and many other kinds of activities. The denomination’s television Hope Channel broadcast reports throughout the day on Sabbath.

In Oslo (Norway), Adventist young people teamed up with the Red Cross to recruit volunteers to help welcome refugees and immigrants. In Plymouth (England), the youth group and the church school worked together to present an Easter service in church in the morning and then, after lunch, went on a nature walk in Jennycliff preserve to clean up trash along the footpaths, beaches and parking lots, equipped with litter pickers and plastic bags.

In Malawi, Radio Malawi 24 reported that Adventist youth conducted a blood donation drive with the appreciation of Wamale Muyaba, senior public health nursing officer for Lilongwe municipality because “most of the time their blood in is infection free unlike other people.” Pastor Kelvin Buya, associate youth director for the denomination’s Central Malawi Conference, urged young people to get HIV testing so they could donate blood. Adventist youth also planted trees and picked refuse in public markets in villages.

Groups of students and other young people from Newbold College in England visited residents of Birdsgove Nursing Home, sang in Princess Square in the nearby town of Bracknell, and helped with community gardens at Jealotts Hill Community Landshare. One group traveled to Newmarket-on-Fergus in County Cork, Ireland, to help with a new congregation getting started there, according to a news bulletin from the denomination’s British Union Conference.

“As Christ shed his blood to save us, so are we called on this day of service to also donate blood to save a life,” Pastor Alfred Asiem, youth director of the denomination’s South Ghana Union Conference, was quoted by the Ghana News Association in media across the country. Adventist youth marched on several main streets in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and organized a blood drive at Borstal Institute, the news service reported. In Ghana the World Youth Day projects also launched a Youth Week of Prayer extending this week to Easter.

Some 300 Adventist young people in Belgium participated in 60 projects just two days before the tragic, senseless killings by terrorists in Brussels, the nation’s capital city and headquarters for the European Union of countries (EU) as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In Denmark, youth from the Aalborg Adventist Church made waffles for and played with the children at a refugee center. In Finland, a group of Adventist youth dressed as beggars on the street, “but instead of asking for money, they offered one Euro to each passerby who was willing to share their story,” reported a news bulletin from the denomination’s Trans-European Division (TED).

Pastor Sam Gungaloo teamed up with Keryhs Sterling, a young adult from Aylesbury, a suburb west of London, to provide live coverage of Global Youth Day on the Internet for 24 hours. For Sterling’s final report on Facebook she wrote; “Another fantastic Global Youth Day is complete, and what an incredible and inspiring experience it was! Spent with the greatest of people! Continue to go out there and make a difference in your communities. [It] isn’t just a day, it’s a lifestyle!”

March 24, 2016

Source


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WHO ARE THE TRUE WATCHMEN IN SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH

PRESENT TRUTH

Published on Nov 20, 2015

Could Seventh-Day Adventists Self Supporting Preachers be GUILTY?:
…….could silence and neutrality be their GREAT SIN of our TIME?

If God abhors one sin above another, of which His people are guilty, it is doing nothing in case of an emergency. Indifference and neutrality in a religious crisis is regarded of God as a grievous crime and equal to the very worst type of hostility against God. 3T 280

A message for Seventh-Day Adventists in the RELIGIOUS CRISIS among Seventh-Day Adventists in Conference and Self-Supporting Church Lines!

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Gods of the New Age Reliligion Exposed...

Yoga Brainwashing Gods of the New Age Religion Exposed as a Fraud (mirror)

Mystery Babylon

Published on Aug 7, 2015

Originally uploaded by Anninos Ch - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZir...


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"Lord, in the Morning"

Lord in the Morning

John Wesley Slider

Published on Feb 8, 2015

"Lord, in the Morning" by Isaac Watts

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Babylon is fallen: the Vatican’s murderous history and false doctrines (2)

Follower of Christ777

Published on Jan 1, 2016

FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

The purpose of this video is NOT to offend Catholics but to bring to light the false doctrines and murderous history of the Vatican. Please watch the video in its entirety.

The Vatican, the first beast of Revelation 13, and the Roman Church being the whore of Babylon according to Revelation 17:1-5, claims it has moral authority to preach what they do. What many Catholic believers do not realize is that the majority of Catholic doctrine cannot be found in the Bible and originates in sun worship.

Further, her popes have also changed the immutable law of God – His holy and eternal ten commandments – by deleting the second commandment on idolatry, changing the Sabbath day from the commanded 7th day to the 1st day in honor of the sun god Mithra and divided the commandment on coveting in two.

The popes of Rome are responsible for the torture and murder of well over 100 million Christians during the dark and middle ages, thus making the Vatican the biggest murderous organization in human history.

The popes of Rome have also put the Bible on the list of forbidden books in 1229 at the Council of Valencia and in 1545 at the Council of Trent. The popes and hierarchy of the Vatican are also supporters of homosexuality and pedophilia since it has been reported that 98% of Vatican prelates are homosexuals. And finally, how many pedophile cases involve Catholic priests!

The sins of the Vatican have reached heaven and our heavenly Father is calling out to Catholics to “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities” (Revelation 18:4-5).

The remaining part of Revelation 18 speaks of how the Roman Catholic Church will come to her end.

Accordingly, the Vatican has NO moral authority for she denies Christ, His word, His doctrines and His commandments! For more information on the Vatican and for what it stands for, please visit www.remnantofgod.org and click on the RCC exposed heading.

For more information and videos on Christian beliefs and Bible prophecy, please visit www.theseventhdayremnantchurch.org; www.remnantofgod.org, www.john1429.org along with SDRMinistries.org and NicholasPoGM on YouTube.

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Union with Rome – Christopher Wordsworth

March 15, 2016 

James Japan

The full title of this book is

UNION WITH ROME

“Is not the Church of

Rome the Babylon of the

Book of Revelation?”

AN ESSAY

BY

CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, D.D.

The late Right Reverend Christopher Wordsworth, DD, Bishop of Lincoln. Illustration for The Illustrated London News, 28 March 1885.

Christopher Wordsworth (9 June 1774 – 2 February 1846), was an English divine and scholar. Within the Anglican tradition, “divines” are clergy of the Church of England whose theological writings have been considered standards for faith, doctrine, worship and spirituality.

A received this book from my good cyberspace friend and brother in Christ, Andrew, who found it on the Internet and proofread it. He sent it to me in PDF format. Some of the footnotes on the pages of the PDF file were graphics, and it was just too much work for me to add those graphics. If you want to read them, please download the PDF file. Wordsworth – UNION WITH ROME

CHAPTER 1 

Whether Babylon in the Apocalypse is the city of Rome.

The subject of our Inquiry is:–

Whether the Prophecies in the Apocalypse (Ch.xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xciii, xix), or Revelation of St. John, respecting Babylon, concern Rome as she now is?

This Question divides itself into two parts;

First; Do these prophecies concern the City in which the Bishop of Rome holds his See?

Secondly; Do these prophecies concern that City in her spiritual as well as her temporal character; that is, do they concern her as a Church, as well as a City? And as exercising power, not merely at Rome and in Italy, but in many other countries, and over many other nations of the world?

Let us begin with the consideration of the former of these two questions.

Do these prophecies concern theCity of Rome?

Here let me premise, that the Authorities to which I shall refer on this subject, will be derived from Scripture, Christian Antiquity, and Pagan and Jewish writers; and that I shall abstain from adopting any thing from any quarter, that can be suspected of any bias against the Church of Rome.

1) We may now proceed to observe, first, these Apocalyptic prophecies, which describe the Woman who is called Babylon, and is seated on the Beast with seven heads and ten horns, do not concern the older, literal, Assyrian Babylon. The inscription on the Woman’s forehead is Mystery (Rev 17:5,7) 1 ; indicating a spiritualmeaning.

1 Mystery, i.e. Something sacred and secret, which is designed to convey to the mind more than meets the ear; see Casaubon, Exerc. Baron. 16 ad A:D: 43; and cf. Heidegger. Myst. Bab. II. p. 79-80.

This word had been used by St. John’s brother Apostle St. Paul, in his description of the Mystery of iniquity, opposed to the Mystery of Godliness (2 Thess.ii.7, and 1 Tim.iii.16); and St. John adopts the word from St. Paul, and appears to apply it to the same object as that which had been portrayed by that Apostle (2 Thess.ii.7)

Mississippi's Sweeping Religious Freedom Bill Heads To Governor's Desk

LIVEWIRE

Caitlin MacNeal
APRIL 01, 2016

The Mississippi House on Friday passed a religious freedom bill that would allow businesses and public employees to deny services to people based on the belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, sending the legislation to Gov. Phil Bryant (R).

The bill, passed by the state Senate earlier this week, also allows businesses to deny services based on the belief that "sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage" and that the belief that gender is determined at birth.

Additionally, the bill would allow religious groups to fire someone whose "conduct or religious beliefs are inconsistent with those of the religious organization," and let those organizations block adoptions due to religious beliefs.

The legislation allows clerks to refuse to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples, too.

Ben Needham, the director of Project One America, a LGBT advocacy project in the South run by the Human Rights Campaign, told Buzzfeed News that the Mississippi legislation is "probably the worst religious freedom bill to date."

State Rep. Randy Boyd (R), one of the bill's sponsors, has said that the legislation was aimed at protecting Christians from discrimination.

"This bill doesn't stop anyone from getting what they want from the state. I have a problem with the discrimination of Christian belief," he said, as quoted by CNN. "I don't uphold discrimination but I believe the Christian belief is more discriminated against than other things. ... I'm trying to get a happy medium here where people get their rights and other people aren't pressured into doing anything they don't believe in against their religious beliefs."

Bryant has not indicated whether he will sign the bill, but told a CNN affiliate in Mississippi that the legislation "gives some people—as I appreciate it—the right to be able to say, that's against my religious beliefs and I don't need to carry out that particular task."

Source

New King James Version

–– A New Age Bible Version ––

“And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” (Revelation 22:19 KJV)



The New Age movement’s expressed goal of infiltrating the evangelical church and gradually changing the Bible to conform to it’s One World Religion is evident in the current new age bible versions. Their words and doctrines prepare the apostate church of these last days to accept the Antichrist, his mark, image, and religion – Lucifer worship. The emerging 'new' Christianity – with its substitution of riches for righteousness, a crown for a cross, and an imitation for a new creation – is shown to be a direct result of the wording in new versions. The Greek manuscripts, critical editions, lexicons and dictionaries behind the new versions are occult in origin, content, and yet unreleased material -- a blueprint for the Antichrist's One World Religion and government.

One of these new age bible versions – the "New King James Bible" (NKJB) – is promoted by the Thomas Nelson publishers as an "update" to the original “1611 Authorized Version” [the “King James Version” (KJV)] having ‘only’ replaced the ‘obsolete’ English words with equivalent ‘modern’ English words. In support of this new age bible version, a prominent fundamentalist, Dr. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Virginia, has had the following to say about the NKJV: "This new edition preserves all of the truth and authority of the original [KJV], but makes it much easier to read and understand. It protects every thought, every idea, every word, just as it was intended to be understood by the original scholars."

However, what ‘they’ claim about the NKJV is far from the truth! Theword ‘changes’ in the NKJV have brought about an entirely new meaning to the original KJV text, with the added footnotes – based upon the corrupt manuscripts –encouraging the reader to question the authenticity of the original KJV text, the Word of God. The following is only a very small portion of the Thomas Nelson Publishers’ description of ‘the changes’ made to the original KJV in order to produce their 1982 edition of the NKJV:

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Happy Sabbath