AND THE THIRD ANGEL FOLLOWED THEM, SAYING WITH A LOUD VOICE, IF ANY MAN WORSHIP THE BEAST AND HIS IMAGE, AND RECEIVE HIS MARK IN HIS FOREHEAD, OR IN HIS HAND. *** REVELATION 14:9
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
May Day and the Posthumous Influence of the Illuminati
Monday, April 30, 2012
World Trade Center now tallest in NYC, with asterisk
3:44 p.m. CDT, April 30, 2012
(Repeats to add slug)
By Edith Honan
NEW YORK, April 30 (Reuters) - One World Trade Center, being built at the site of the fallen twin towers, surpassed the Empire State Building on Monday as the tallest building in New York.
Construction crews set in place a steel horizontal beam at a height of about 1,270 feet (387 meters), topping by about 20 feet (six meters) the rooftop of the observation deck of the Empire State Building, which stands about 3 miles (4.8 km) to the north in Midtown Manhattan.
Including the antenna tower, however, the iconic Empire State Building is still higher.
The Empire State Building, built in 1931, was the city's tallest at a height of 1,545 feet(471 meters) to the tip of its broadcast antenna until 1972 when it was overtaken by the original World Trade Center towers. It then regained the title after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which destroyed the complex.
Construction started six years ago on the new World Trade Center and now the skyscraper, formerly called the Freedom Tower, surpasses the top floor of the Empire State Building, Port Authority officials told reporters.
"The new World Trade Center is more than just a skyscraper:it is a symbol of the enduring spirit of the City and State of New York, representing our commitment to rebuilding stronger than before," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in commemorating the milestone.
One World Trade Center will stand at 1,776 feet (541 meters) to the tip of its antenna when it is completed, possibly by late 2013. Then it will top the Empire State entirely.
The skyscraper, only 55 percent of which is leased, will be higher than the former twin towers, which were toppled in the 2001 attacks when nearly 3,000 people were killed. The north tower stood 1,727 feet (526 meters) including its antenna.
(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Philip Barbara)
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Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Disruption of 'Status Quo'
Is Sunday Your Day of Rest?
Or is it just as busy as the other six days of the week?
By Patch Staff
April 29, 2012
Beltane
Religious Satanism·
Read more
Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.
By DAVID K. SHIPLER
Published: April 28, 2012
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.
When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.
This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps.
Carefully orchestrated sting operations usually hold up in court. Defendants invariably claim entrapment and almost always lose, because the law requires that they show no predisposition to commit the crime, even when induced by government agents. To underscore their predisposition, many suspects are “warned about the seriousness of their plots and given opportunities to back out,” said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. But not always, recorded conversations show. Sometimes they are coaxed to continue.
Undercover operations, long practiced by the F.B.I., have become a mainstay of counterterrorism, and they have changed in response to the post-9/11 focus on prevention. “Prior to 9/11 it would be very unusual for the F.B.I. to present a crime opportunity that wasn’t in the scope of the activities that a person was already involved in,” said Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union, a lawyer and former F.B.I. agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups. An alleged drug dealer would be set up to sell drugs to an undercover agent, an arms trafficker to sell weapons. That still happens routinely, but less so in counterterrorism, and for good reason.
“There isn’t a business of terrorism in the United States, thank God,” a former federal prosecutor, David Raskin, explained.
“You’re not going to be able to go to a street corner and find somebody who’s already blown something up,” he said. Therefore, the usual goal is not “to find somebody who’s already engaged in terrorism but find somebody who would jump at the opportunity if a real terrorist showed up in town.”
And that’s the gray area. Who is susceptible? Anyone who plays along with the agents, apparently. Once the snare is set, law enforcement sees no choice. “Ignoring such threats is not an option,” Mr. Boyd argued, “given the possibility that the suspect could act alone at any time or find someone else willing to help him.”
Typically, the stings initially target suspects for pure speech — comments to an informer outside a mosque, angry postings on Web sites, e-mails with radicals overseas — then woo them into relationships with informers, who are often convicted felons working in exchange for leniency, or with F.B.I. agents posing as members of Al Qaeda or other groups.
Some targets have previous involvement in more than idle talk: for example, Waad Ramadan Alwan, an Iraqi in Kentucky, whose fingerprints were found on an unexploded roadside bomb near Bayji, Iraq, and Raja Khan of Chicago, who had sent funds to an Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan.
But others seem ambivalent, incompetent and adrift, like hapless wannabes looking for a cause that the informer or undercover agent skillfully helps them find. Take the Stinger missile defendant James Cromitie, a low-level drug dealer with a criminal record that included no violence or hate crime, despite his rants against Jews. “He was searching for answers within his Islamic faith,” said his lawyer, Clinton W. Calhoun III, who has appealed his conviction. “And this informant, I think, twisted that search in a really pretty awful way, sort of misdirected Cromitie in his search and turned him towards violence.”
THE informer, Shahed Hussain, had been charged with fraud, but avoided prison and deportation by working undercover in another investigation. He was being paid by the F.B.I. to pose as a wealthy Pakistani with ties to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist group that Mr. Cromitie apparently had never heard of before they met by chance in the parking lot of a mosque.
“Brother, did you ever try to do anything for the cause of Islam?” Mr. Hussain asked at one point.
“O.K., brother,” Mr. Cromitie replied warily, “where you going with this, brother?”
Two days later, the informer told him, “Allah has more work for you to do,” and added, “Revelation is going to come in your dreams that you have to do this thing, O.K.?” About 15 minutes later, Mr. Hussain proposed the idea of using missiles, saying he could get them in a container from China. Mr. Cromitie laughed.
Reading hundreds of pages of transcripts of the recorded conversations is like looking at the inkblots of a Rorschach test. Patterns of willingness and hesitation overlap and merge. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Mr. Cromitie said, and then explained that he meant women and children. “I don’t care if it’s a whole synagogue of men.” It took 11 months of meandering discussion and a promise of $250,000 to lead him, with three co-conspirators he recruited, to plant fake bombs at two Riverdale synagogues.
“Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” said Judge Colleen McMahon, sentencing him to 25 years. She branded it a “fantasy terror operation” but called his attempt “beyond despicable” and rejected his claim of entrapment.
The judge’s statement was unusual, but Mr. Cromitie’s characteristics were not. His incompetence and ambivalence could be found among other aspiring terrorists whose grandiose plans were nurtured by law enforcement. They included men who wanted to attack fuel lines at Kennedy International Airport; destroy the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) in Chicago; carry out a suicide bombing near Tampa Bay, Fla., and bomb subways in New York and Washington. Of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations.
Another New York City subway plot, which recently went to trial, needed no help from government. Nor did a bombing attempt in Times Square, the abortive underwear bombing in a jetliner over Detroit, a planned attack on Fort Dix, N.J., and several smaller efforts. Some threats are real, others less so. In terrorism, it’s not easy to tell the difference.
David K. Shipler is the author of “Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on April 29, 2012, on page SR4 of the New York edition with the headline: Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I..
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Saturday, April 28, 2012
Churches Pray for Victims of Child Abuse on 'Blue Sunday'
Freedom of Religion = Freedom of Worship?
1. Requiring religious organizations to provide abortion-inducing drugs and contraceptives free of charge.2. Requiring individuals to pay a surcharge to fund abortions.3. Overturning HHS protections for religious health care workers not to be forced to participate in abortions.4. Using a recess appointment to place radical homosexual activist Chai Feldblum as a commissioner on the EEOC-who recently stated that when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, she has "a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win."5. Refusing to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.6. Removing non-profit work that relates to "religious instruction" from the student loan forgiveness program.7. Arguing recently at the Supreme Court that the government can interfere with the internal operations of religious organizations.
Loma Linda Pastor Looks at the Church's Role in Politics and Life (Part II)
By Gina Tenorio
1:31 am
Pastor Randy Roberts leads one of the largest Adventist congregations in the world right here in Loma Linda.
As senior Pastor for the Loma Linda University Seventh-day Adventist Church, he ministers to some 7,000 members. Many travel in from as far as San Diego and Orange counties.
Pastor Roberts recently sat down to speak with Redlands–Loma Linda Patch about the church, the Adventist community and religion. Part one of our interview was published April 27. He spoke about his background and what led him to become a minister.
In part two, the pastor discusses how some perceive the church, the role of religion in today’s world and the University Church’s role in the city.
I’ve gotten a mixed response when I’ve posted stories about the church and the community. My experience has been, quite honestly, nothing but positive. Dr. (Rhodes) Rigsby, the Mayor, has always been very open that he is a member of the church. His philosophy has always seemed to be one of, to paraphrase, live and let live. But not everyone seems to see it this way. Do you think people misunderstand the church?
I think so. Anytime you hear of a church that either isn’t well known, or is in some way, some fashion different than maybe many other churches that are more familiar, people tend to have questions about them. And since as Seventh-day Adventists, we worship on a different day, we worship on Saturday rather than Sunday, that sets us apart as somewhat different. And most of us (people in general) are at least a little bit uncertain, if not outright suspicious, of any kind of thing that is different -- whether it be a church or some other organization or a group of people. A lot of that is just based on uncertainty, lack of knowledge. We’re not sure who these people are, those kinds of things. So it’s not surprising there would be some different kinds of feelings.
But I hope that once there is an opportunity to interact with Seventh-day Adventists, get to know some of them better, get to know what they stand for ... I hope that that disappears and that there’s a positive impression.
From your perspective, is the church growing in numbers?
I can say this, it is a growing church that reflects the growth patterns of the larger Protestant Christian Faith.
What I mean by that is that in the northern world and in the western world, the numbers tend to be shrinking. In the Southern hemisphere and moving toward the east toward Africa and so forth, the numbers are really growing. So if you take it on balance, is the Seventh-day Adventist Church growing? The answer to that is, yes it is, in fact, quite significantly. But the places were it’s growing reflects where Christianity as a whole tends to be growing -- South America, Central America and Africa. Those are the places of the greatest growth.
Not so much here in North America. In fact in North America, and again I think this is reflective of Christian faith in general, the numbers are a little more, maybe static, and in some cases even declining.
Do you believe then that we are drifting away from our faith?
I think certainly, in America today, religion occupies a very different place, a very different prominence than it occupied even in my childhood a few decades ago. It’s a very different world than it was at that time. In same ways, yes people have stepped away from that. George Barna’sorganization, which does a lot research into these matters, says that the rates of Biblical illiteracy are very high. The kinds of things that society in general would once have known and recognized as being from the Bible many now don’t know and recognize that. They just don’t know.
They asked different questions of people, even people who claimed to go to church. One of the questions Barna’s organization asked was about the Epistles. And one of the comments they got back was that the Epistles were the wives of the Apostles. And yet, the Epistles are the letters that Paul and Peter and James and others wrote.
His organization says that that kind of lack of awareness, that Biblical illiteracy, is pretty high. I even read, just in the last two or three months, of one pastor who heard that stat and quoted it the next week in his sermon. Somebody stopped him at the door and said, “Well if the Epistles aren’t the wives of the Apostles, who’s wives are they?” So even the people sitting in church will have a lack of awareness.
I think the answer is yes. There is an America that has a very different emphasis on religion. In some cases, religion is not welcomed. In other cases, it’s mocked and derided, the Christian faith. I think there is a real difference than the world I knew in what years I did spend in this country. Like I said, I spent a lot of years out of this country when I was growing up, but we would always come back for vacations and furloughs. I did spend two or three years here. But even in my college years, Christian faith occupied a very different place from what it once did.
Having said all that. I think that gives the church the opportunity to be the church, to be the light of Jesus, the love of God in the world in a very unique way.
What do you teach people? How do impress this love and devotion to faith?
My role here, probably the most central way in which I do that, is through a preaching ministry. I do a lot of teaching as well. And my focus personally is for my wife and me to pour our lives into our two kids so they will grow up to be positive citizens who contribute to their world, who love God, who love others, who serve others.
So that maybe one of the ways you outlive your life is by the people who you disciple, the people who you pour your life into. Our kids are really our first order of business for us, and then our congregation after that.
A lot of people felt the church took a stand or should have taken a stance on some issues, including a proposed McDonald’s coming to the city to the loss of Sunday mail delivery, which conflicts with the Adventist belief of observing a Saturday Sabbath. What role do you feel the church should play in city politics?
Well, in this congregation, you will probably find people representing the whole spectrum. From one side of the people who will fight with all their strength to keep (McDonald’s) out to the other side and the people who would say this is a free country, allow people to make their own choices.
You would find the entire spectrum seated right here every week in worship. From an official angle, otherwise the official church, we do not and did not take a position on that. Our position is we are for health. We want to do everything we can to promote health for ourselves, for others, for everyone in our community. We’re very supportive of that. At the same time, we are for freedom of choice. Freedom of people’s ability to choose what they’re going to do.
That doesn’t mean that people can’t stand up against whatever they oppose -- whether it’s McDonald’s or whatever other organization might be building down the block. They have a right to do that. We’re not going to tell them we can’t. As a church, while we want to be healthy and want to encourage our members and friends in our community to be healthy, we do believe that any business has a right to do what it can to expand and to grow. I think we can understand that.
I can tell you that we decidedly, intentionally, avoid in our church, from the front, encouraging people to vote this way or to vote that way or to take this stand or take the other stand. That’s not something we get involved in. In fact we have a policy here among the pastoral staff that when an election is coming around for … two months or three months before the election, we will not knowingly or intentionally have any candidate participate publicly up front in the service because we’re not trying to promote this candidate over that candidate.
We’re here as pastors to pastor to our entire congregation. Whether they are on this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle, our goal it to minister to each and everyone one of them, not to take political stances.
Could there be a scenario in which we would? I would hope so. But I haven’t seen it yet. The reason I would say I would hope so is because I just finished reading one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time, a book called "Bonhoeffer" written by Eric Metaxas. It’s one of the best sellers right now in Barnes and Noble. It’s a powerful book on life of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in World War II who took the exceedingly unpopular stand of opposing Hitler far before others did. He could just see where things were headed and he began to speak out against that. He was ultimately executed by the Nazis.
My point is to say, could there come something in which conceivably the church would take a stand, yes. I don’t know what that could be. But as Bonhoeffer did, there could conceivably come a time in any community or any country where people of faith or people of conscience would have to stand up and say we simply can’t go along with this, whatever that might be.
But in general terms certainly with city politics and other things like that, we intentionally as a church leaders pull back and respect people’s right to make those choices.
Now we can say we encourage you to get out and vote. We encourage you to get involved in your community; we encourage you to be active; we encourage you not to sit on the sidelines; but we don’t go a step further and say “This is how we expect you to vote. We expect you to stand.”
I hope we can teach some principals about ethical living and all the rest that will help inform people’s decision-making process as they make those choices, but Adventism has a pretty strong emphasis on free moral agency. And that is the right that God has given each one of us as individuals to make choices of conscience informed by our relationship with God, but which are true to our conscience.
In fact one side note, not the principal reason, but one side note is, like I said a moment ago we have the whole spectrum sitting in our pews. There have been times when I can look here and see this person and look there and see that person and know that they are in leadership on opposing sides of the same issue. They’re both there and they’re both worshipping. We respect that.
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Moderate earthquake shakes Southern California
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