Thursday, July 04, 2013

A Hindu Goddess Arrives To Bless Embassy Row


by NPR STAFF
June 30, 2013 7:20 AM


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The goddess Saraswati now looks down upon Embassy Row in Washington, D.C.Sarah Ventre/NPR

Embassy Row — otherwise known as Massachusetts Avenue — in Washington, D.C., is decorated with flags of every nation, flying in front of impressive embassy buildings.

In front of the embassies, there are often statues of national heroes. Winston Churchill graces the grounds of the British Embassy. Outside the Indian Embassy, Mahatma Gandhi looks as though he's in full stride, clad in loincloth and sandals.

And now, there's a Hindu goddess. Saraswati just arrived. She stands in a garden in front of Indonesia's embassy, glowing white and gold, with her four arms upraised.

Indonesian Ambassador Dino Patti Djalal says the goal was to stand out from the other embassies.

"I think this is exactly what we wanted to do with Massachusetts Avenue," he says, "add something that would jazz it up."

Saraswati is the goddess of learning and wisdom, Djalal says. At her feet are three children studying. It was crafted by three Balinese sculptors in three weeks.

Her expression is beatific. "This would be the same expression that you would see in Hindu goddesses throughout Bali," Djalal says. "A face of calm ... blessing those who are seeing her."

Although Indonesia is home to the largest population of Muslims in the world, Djalal chose a symbol of the Hindu religion for the embassy in Washington.

"One of the most famous, if not the most famous, islands in Indonesia is Bali," he says. "And Bali is a Hindu enclave in Muslim-majority Indonesia. And I think it says a lot about our respect for religious freedom that the statue in front of the country with the largest Muslim population is a Hindu statue."


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Rev. David Weekley, One Of First Transgender Methodist Clergyman, Shares His Story


HuffPost Live | Posted: 06/28/2013 2:19 pm EDT | Updated: 06/28/2013 11:39 pm EDT


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/david-weekley-transgender-clergy_n_3512590.html?1372443601&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl19%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D337950

Rev. David Weekley hid his identity as a transgendered person for 28 years, until he finally revealed his secret in 2009, becoming one of the first openly transgender clergy serving the United Methodist Church. He shared his story on HuffPost Live.

The reaction from Weekley's parish after he came out reflected many of the challenges the transgender community faces. "I received real mixed feedback from people -- colleagues, parishioners, just friends of the community," he told host Mike Sacks. "While I had a lot of support, there was a lot of pushback. There were attempts made to bring charges against my ministry--to have my ordination revoked."

Weekley, who authored the book "In from the Wilderness: Sherman," transitioned from female to male in 1975, at the age of 24. "When I went to seminary in the '80s, it wasn't safe to be out, whether you were LGBTQ -- those topics weren't talked about, only in negative ways. And so I decided to enter the ordained ministry, serve congregations the best I could, and let them have a chance to know me, then share my story. I thought that would make a positive difference."

But though a number of churches have begun to accept transgender people in the clergy, widespread acceptance is still a challenge, Weekley explained.

"The problem is, so often, even if the policy is open, for transgender people to actually be called to a church or have an opportunity to serve is a different story. Transgender people are just newer on the radar, and for a lot of us who transitioned years ago, we were told by the folks we worked with not to share our story."


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Happy Fourth of July 2013


Cairo the scene of the latest Coup d'etat

Cairo
القاهرة
al-Qāhirah
Top left: Downtown Cairo; top right: Ibn Tulun Mosque; middle:Cairo Citadel; bottom left: Nile Felucca; bottom middle: Cairo Tower; bottom right: Muizz Street

Its official name is القاهرة al-Qāhirah , means literally "the Vanquisher" or "the Conqueror"; Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [elqɑ(ː)ˈheɾɑ], sometimes it is informally also referred to as كايرو Kayro [ˈkæjɾo].[5]



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Declining Moral Values



Apr 20, 2012


Colin Standish

Since the end of World War II, there has been a decided, alarming change in the moral values of Western society. Until World War II, morality in the Western world had been, to a large extent, consistent with biblical principles. Even those who lived in immoral relationships rarely tried to defend their antisocial behavior. Premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexual and lesbian relationships, and divorce were at least seen in a negative light.

By the time we reached the 21st century, to a major extent, this had vanished. Indeed, those who still held strongly to Christian morality were branded as narrow-minded, void of love, and exercising bigotry. Instead of rejecting immoral practices and behaviors, society began to consider them alternative lifestyles. If this had been limited to those who practice these sins in the secular world, it might be understandable. But society has greatly influenced many people in the Christian world, who now believe that God desires us to accept such sinful behavior. Before going further, I must mention that we should not despise those living in sin. We should seek to “put our arms around them” and encourage them to live a life in harmony with the godly principles which have, in the past, protected marriage, family life, and society.

On May 15, 2011, the Los Angeles Times published an article entitled “A More-inclusive Church,” written by a Presbyterian minister. Most of us have come to understand that the word “inclusive” today means accepting the immorality that may be found in the world and in the church. This ordained minister pastors a church in West Virginia. He had once adhered to biblical principles of Christian morality, but sometime ago he faced the issue of his church electing a known lesbian to become one of their elders. In the end, the majority of the members concluded that they were wrong in their previous stand, and that the stand of the Presbyterian Church was wrong.

All but a few members came to agree that Christ would approve them ordaining this lesbian as a church elder. So, the said lesbian became an elder in their church. The pastor reported that this decision brought many of the estranged Christians in the area back to the church, and he spoke of great growth in the membership. However, there were members of that church who refused to continue worshiping there and withdrew their membership. It was implied that these members were not Christlike.
Certainly, Christ showed His love for the immoral. The stories of Mary Magdalene, the woman caught in adultery, the Samaritan at the well, and Rahab give us examples of Jesus’ love and compassion. He set the perfect example. Christ loved the sinner, but He also hated the sin. His words, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more,” sum up the Christlike principles in dealing with immoral behavior. John 8:11.
Jesus’ compassion for the sinner is the reason why He died on Calvary. Not only did He have compassion for the sinner, He earnestly entreated the sinner to “sin no more.”

Many congregations in our beloved Seventh-day Adventist Church have abandoned Jesus’ principles. They may express a great “love” for the sinner—and they should—but they ignore or condone the sin! What a contrast from Christ’s principles. Christ provides grace and power to overcome sin and restore the character of the repentant one.
No one can be truly content living in sin. It brings guilt and disharmony—especially among family and friends. By example, it leads other people in the way of Satan. Some of our churches openly endorse the lifestyles of members practicing immorality.

No true Seventh-day Adventist, no true Christian, can ignore, condone, or endorse a lifestyle which is clearly against the Word of God. Let each one of us pray daily for power and strength from Christ to live a moral Christian life, and that we will also help others gain the victory Christ gives over all sin. May this be the blessing of every reader.


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World Church News takes a step back into FACEBOOK

We still have daily, Adventist news from around the world, but it's moved to our page at
 




~O~




On the heels of the recent Cyber-Surveillance revelations they take a contrarian leap backwards?   

Wasn't Facebook meant for socializing? For individuals, not organizations?

WCN must know something we don't?


Godspeed.

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The Declaration of Independence



IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton


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Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Morsi Is Out as President, Egyptian State Media Says



Egypt’s military moved forcefully to seize power from President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday, deploying tanks and troops in Cairo and other cities, restricting his travel and convening an emergency meeting of top civilian and religious leaders to devise an interim government and lay the groundwork for new elections.
Ahramonline, the government’s official English-language Web site, said the military had informed Mr. Morsi that he was no longer head of state. There was no word on Mr. Morsi’s whereabouts.
The military’s actions came as enormous crowds of the president’s supporters and opponents filled the streets of the capital and soldiers were deployed in significant numbers to keep the spiraling political crisis from going out of complete control.

READ MORE »http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/world/middleeast/egypt.html?emc=edit_na_20130703

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Towards Global Sunday Law


Several thousand years ago, the king of Babylon decreed that his subjects must worship only in the way he saw fit.




Pope Francis I.
Photo credit: Gabriel Escobedo (ShareAlike).



Three Jewish men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, chose to follow their consciences, standing up against the king and his edict. Thus began a standoff that remains famous even to this day (see Daniel 3).

Unfortunately, we are seeing the same situation repeating itself today.

The Pope is calling for the world to acknowledge and honor Sunday as a day of rest. Legislation that will force the world to worship and rest on Sunday would be the ideal solution. There are many voices clamoring to fulfill exactly such a goal, using the economy, the environment, and even the family as reasons to legislate Sunday rest.

Another standoff is on the horizon. Those who refuse to give up the Biblical seventh-day Sabbath will face trials as tough as the furnace faced by Shadrach and his companions. However, we can hold fast hope, knowing that the God who spared the Israelite men from the fiery furnace is coming again soon.

Here are some of the ways the world is moving towards Sunday legislation:


2013
Jan 28, 2013
Pope Calls on Faithful to Dedicate Sunday to the Lord
In his Sunday Angelus address, Pope Benedict XVI called on the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square to live Sunday not only as a day of rest and of the family, but above all as a day "to dedicate to the Lord."

2012
Dec 19, 2012
Vatican Works to Stop Sunday Shopping In Italy
The Roman Catholic Church, trade unions and small business associations have joined forces in a bid to save Sundays.

Sep 04, 2012
Eurozone demands six-day week for Greece
Government in Athens under pressure to introduce a six-day working week as part of the terms for a second bailout.

Jun 26, 2012
Sunday Legislation in the EU
Learn about EU Sunday legislation in the news from various websites, articles, and videos.

Jun 06, 2012
Sundays must be a day of rest dedicated to God, family, pope says
Sunday must be a day of rest for everyone, so people can be free to be with their families and with God, the pope said.

Mar 07, 2012
Catholic Church and Trade Unions form 'Holy Alliance'
Catholic leaders and trade unions support Sunday observance.

2011
Jul 19, 2011
Vatican Official says Sundays are for worship and rest
Vatican official exhorts Catholics to set aside Sundays for God and rest.

Jul 07, 2011
Israel looks to making Sunday Day of Rest
Israel’s government is examining a proposal to shift the weekend to the western Saturday and Sunday.

Jul 05, 2011
Israeli Government to consider adding Sunday as day of rest
PM appoints head of National Economic Council as chairman of committee to look into making Sunday day of rest, Friday half-day

Jun 20, 2011
Inception of European Sunday Alliance in Brussels
The European Sunday Alliance has formed as a network of Sunday alliances, trade unions, and religious communities.

Jun 01, 2011
Modern Noah's Ark to Set Sail for Olympics
Life-sized replica of Noah's Ark to sail up Thames for 2012 games... complete with animals

Jan 19, 2011
American Government Seizing Taxpayers' Money
Could there really be a vast conspiracy involving Wall Street and the US Government?

2010
Sep 26, 2010
Pope Wants Sunday As Day of Rest Starting in 2011
Pope Benedict XVI is asking families and parishes to begin preparations a year in advance (2011) availing of Pope John Paul II's apostolic exhortation “Familiaris Consortio”

Sep 07, 2010
North Dakota Catholic Conference says 'Sunday law' benefits all people
“Sunday closing laws are not about honoring the Sabbath day, they are about honoring people and families.”

Apr 05, 2010
Even Atheists Need to Switch Off on Sundays
Germany's highest court has ruled that Sunday should be kept as a day of rest and has overturned a Berlin law easing restrictions on Sunday shopping. Most German newspapers on Wednesday greet the ruling, some for reasons of religion and tradition, others out of a concern for workers' rights.

2009
Feb 23, 2009
European Bishops Still Pressing for Sunday Rest


Feb 17, 2009
Protection of the Work-Free Sunday


2008
Nov 18, 2008
The EU Must Keep Sunday, Says Catholic Church


Jul 15, 2008
Sunday Shopping Banned in Croatia


Apr 06, 2008
Ikea Fined for Sunday Opening in Paris
Ikea was ordered to pay more than $700,000 for staying open on Sundays in a Paris suburb.


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Revisiting Mountain View California

Just looking for clues? 

What they call Data mining?



A visitor from Mountain View, California viewed "EndrTimes: Revisiting: I Am Legend" 4 mins ago


Ship of Fools? July 4th Protest Sets Sail

WEDNESDAY, JULY 03, 2013

By Staff Report





Reddit, Mozilla, WordPress, and others plan July 4 protest against NSA surveillance A large coalition of civil rights and privacy groups and potentially thousands of websites will stage protests on the Fourth of July to protest surveillance programs at the U.S. National Security Agency. As part of the Restore the Fourth campaign, many website members of the 30,000-member Internet Defense League plan to display a protest of NSA surveillance and the text of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Websites participating include Reddit, where Restore the Fourth originated, WordPress, 4chan, Mozilla, Fark, and Cheezburger.com. – PCWorld

Dominant Social Theme: Finally, corporate America stands up and cries out for independence.

Free-Market Analysis: PCWorld is owned by IDG, a huge conglomerate that solicits advertising from the entire spectrum of Silicon Valley tech companies. These companies are have been cooperating intimately with US intel for a decade or more.

We are supposed to believe that these same companies plus the organizational entity for this July 4th gathering are going to represent the concerns of US citizens when it comes to privacy?

Mozilla is integrated with Google, which in turn is closely integrated with US intel. Reddit is owned by Condé Nast, which owns Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Condé Nast has never been known for a commitment to individual liberties.

The reason that these protests sprang up so quickly is that they are apparently using the organizational backbone of Occupy Wall Street, in part funded by uber-globalist George Soros.

OWS is best known for its lamentable attempt to pit the "99 percent" against the one percent. (We helped a good deal with the demise of OWS as a credible activist movement by pointing out this was the same sort of strategy that led to the bloody French Revolution.)

The "one percent" – comprising millions of wealthy and semi-wealthy individuals – are NOT responsible for the lamentable state of US freedoms.

It is a system of fiat money and central banking run by a tiny handful of individuals that is the problem. The formulation of the "one percent" was an attempt to direct attention away from this system of monopoly money and privilege. It was a deliberate and false paradigm and remains so.

But this is the group, nonetheless, that is organizing the protests, from what we can tell. No doubt organizers hope to derive additional or renewed credibility by hitching OWS's divisive message to more credible July 4th protests.

Here's more:

Organizers of Restore the Fourth are ... planning live protests in dozens of U.S. cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta.

"How long do we expect rational people to accept using terrorism to justify and excuse endless executive and state power?" actor John Cusack said during a press conference announcing the protests. "Why are so many in our government, our press, our intellectual class afraid of an informed public?"

Representatives of the NSA and the U.S. Office of Director of National Intelligence didn't immediately respond to requests for comments on the planned protests. The protests come after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about widespread NSA surveillance of U.S. residents and other people to media outlets, with the first details published last month.

... Cusack, a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, complained that many defenders of the NSA surveillance programs are focusing on supposed character flaws of Snowden and the journalists who broke the story instead of on the surveillance itself and questions about its legality.

The spotlight on Snowden is a "big distraction to avoid focusing on the invasions that have actually been occurring," added Harvey Anderson, senior vice president business and legal affairs at Mozilla. The lack of transparency about the surveillance programs "undermines the openness of the Internet," he added. Efforts to downplay the surveillance and suggest that the U.S. public doesn't care won't work, added Craig Aaron, president and CEO of digital rights group Free Press.


Wikipedia tells us about the Freedom of the Press Foundation:

The Freedom of the Press Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2012 to fund and support free speech and freedom of the press. The organization is headed by both mainstream and alternative journalists such as Daniel Ellsberg and Xeni Jardin as well as activists, celebrities, and filmmakers.

The mission is to help "promote and fund aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government", and it offers a way to crowd-source funding for WikiLeaks and independent journalistic organizations. Supported organizations includes WikiLeaks, MuckRock News, the National Security Archive, The UpTake, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Center for Public Integrity and Truthout.

Many of these names have ties to mainstream journalism, or mainstream funding, and constitute a kind of controlled opposition. Even the goals of the July 4th protest are depressingly modest:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;

2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;

3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

The July 4th demonstrations seek to demand an end to the unconstitutional surveillance methods employed by the U.S. government and to ensure that all future government surveillance is constitutional, limited, and clearly defined.


These protests are being sponsored in part by the same technologists that have a history of cooperating with US intel, have been badly intimidated or have generated considerable wealth from their cooperation.

They are being organized by OWS, which is funded in part by George Soros and which has tried to create the conditions for a kind of second French Revolution in the US. The goals of the protest are to reform the unconstitutional PATRIOT Act (instead of doing away with it) and to "define and limit" further surveillance.

But ... change will not come via protests organized by a controlled opposition. Change will come as individuals begin to rediscover the freedoms on which the US (confederation) was initially based and take appropriate individual action to change their OWN circumstances.

Petitioning the US Congress will likely have little or no effect. There is a reason the US Congress has a favorability rating of about 10 percent ...

Change is hard. Protests are easy, especially violent ones.

Conclusion: They take us for fools?


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National Security Agency has pushed to “rethink and reapply” its treatment of the Fourth Amendment since before 9/11



JUNE 10, 2013

by Lauren Harper





“The Fourth Amendment is as applicable to eSIGINT as it is to the SIGINT of yesterday and today. The Information Age will however cause us to rethink and reapply the procedures, policies and authorities born in an earlier electronic surveillance environment.”



The National Security Agency (NSA) has been pushing to “rethink and reapply” its application of the Fourth Amendment since before 9/11. This was necessary, it argued, to attain a “powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network.”

According to a declassified document posted by the National Security Archive and featured in a recent Politico article, in addition to attempting to re-frame the way we think of our right to privacy, the NSA has also received a robust infusion of funds after 9/11, paving the way for the Orwellian surveillance state Edward Snowden helped reveal. In light of recent events, the declassified record on the NSA is especially enlightening. Jeffrey T. Richelson’s recent posting of 98 newly declassified government documents tracing the Agency’s wide range of cyber activities, concerns, and attitudes since the Clinton administration is a must read. Some of the most notable revelations found in the declassified documents include:

  • The NSA’s push to “rethink and reapply” the nature of the Fourth Amendment as early as 2001.
  • The estimation that by January 2001, 60% of the Presidential Daily Briefings were based upon SIGINT, a percentage that has surely increased over the last decade.
  • The NSA’s goal to selectively increase production of information from the global network.
  • And the NSA’s quest to deploy tools efficiently to sort, process, move and store information.

Give the National Security Agency analysts some credit, though. They did correctly predict the queasiness of many Americans to having the entirety of their digital lives captured and stored:


A paragraph from a declassified Secret NSA document from 1997 laments the public’s interpretation of the government, specifically the NSA, as the bad guy, quoting, “Specifically, the focus is on the potential abuse of the Government’s applications of this new information technology that will result in an invasion of personal privacy.” Notice the only countries the document was released to were Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – all members of the ECHELON Network.



Delve deeper into the declassified NSA documents for yourself here and here, and trace the path the NSA took to avoid becoming “the bad guy.”


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DHS, FBI Warn “Malicious Actors” Are Using Company Websites, Social Media to Plan Attacks




June 17, 2013 in Featured



A graphic created by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation detailing ways in which public tools available via the internet can be used to facilitate “attack planning.”

Public Intelligence

The Department of Homeland Security and FBI are warning law enforcement and security personnel around the country that online tools, search engines and corporate websites are a potential source of information for “malicious actors” seeking to plan terrorist attacks.

In a bulletin issued in late April, DHS and FBI state that malicious actors can “leverage the Internet to gain information against a potential target to support pre-operational planning efforts for kinetic or cyber attacks.” This includes using “Internet search engines for information such as maps, company photographs or blueprints, and gain additional details from social media sites and Web blogs.” A helpful infographic included in the bulletin describes how company websites and online maps can provide addresses, information on entrances, exits, parking, security and business hours. By combining information from a company’s website with social media, the bulletin suggests that businesses can be targeted for phishing attacks and computer network intrusions that could result in the “exfiltration of sensitive or proprietary personal or corporate information for identity theft, intellectual property theft, extortion, or other crimes.”

To mitigate vulnerabilities related to “internet attack planning,” DHS and FBI recommend minimizing “online presences” and protecting personal information, as well as conducting “ongoing training programs that focus on operational and network security.” A graphic accompanying the bulletin titled “Online Presence Can Facilitate Attack Planning” implies that public web presences via websites, blogs and social media increase an organization’s risk of being struck by violent criminal actions including “shootings and bombings” or cyber attacks.



An image from a 2010 report from the Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center showing how internet sites can be “exploited for preoperational planning.”



DHS expressed similar concerns in a 2010 report authored with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) titled “Internet Sites Allow Detailed Surveillance and Pre-Attack Planning.” The report warns of “increasing sophistication” of commercially available internet tools that “may allow terrorists to study security measures in place and the relationship between the target and surrounding area using various viewing angles, to choose ingress and egress routes, and to monitor attack progress and results.” It claims that “video obtained through live Web-based camera feeds combined with street-level and direct overhead imagery views from Internet imagery sites allow terrorists to conduct remote surveillance of multiple potential targets without exposing themselves to detection.” To substantiate this position, the report cites the use of “a mapping capability operated by Google” by Iraqi insurgents as early as 2006 to plan rocket attacks on U.S. facilities. While online tools, in isolation, can only provide so much information, the report warns that “combining the use of multiple Internet tools can provide detailed, real-time information on potential attack locations” enabling potential terrorists to minimize their “physical presence during the target selection and surveillance phases” and limiting “law enforcement’s ability to detect and disrupt any plot.”

Last November, the NCTC released a document to law enforcement describing how urban explorers, “hobbyists who seek illicit access to transportation and industrial facilities in urban areas” including rooftops, utility tunnels and bridges, could unwittingly be “aiding terrorists” by providing detailed photos and videos of their exploration. This media “could be used by terrorists to remotely identify and surveil potential targets” which could “aid terrorists in pinpointing locations in dense urban environments.” One scenario described in the document involves urban explorers discovering and documenting the use of a bridge’s “ladders, crosswalk scaffoldings, trap doors, scuttles, and hatches” and reveal methods of accessing “structural components, including caissons (the structures that house the anchor points of a bridge suspension system), to identify weaknesses.”


Source
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Chain of Leaks 1,2,3.



WikiLeaks - 2010 and 2011 - Bradley Manning, US Army Soldier via Julian Assange,  Australian Internet activist, founder, editor-in-chief, and director of WikiLeaks  - The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel.




VatiLeaks - 2012 - Paolo Gabriele, the pope's personal butler via Gianluigi Nuzzi, Italian Journalist - a book Sua Santità—Le Carte Segrete di Benedetto XVI or Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI.




NSALeaks - 2013 - Edward Snowden, NSA sub-contractor Agent via Glenn Greenwald American Journalist - The Guardian.



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Resource:

Wikipedia

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Wayne Dodge Starts Church Brawl Over ‘Seat Saving’ Practices


Posted: July 2, 2013




Church attendee Wayne Dodge was booked into Weber County Jail this week on suspicion of aggravated assault, a third-degree felony, and disorderly conduct, a class C misdemeanor.

Dodge was arrested after he caused a church brawl over a few seats that were being saved for other parishioners during an unusually packed service.

An argument broke out in the pews because more than 400 people were attempting to fit inside the church for a missionary’s farewell and a baby blessing.

A deputy for the Plain City police department said it was the “seat saving” practice that led to the initial argument. The officer then revealed that a fistfight broke out in the church’s parking and that one man was hit by a car.

The Weber County Sheriff’s deputies received numerous 911 calls from members of the LDC chapel.

The bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Meadows Ward told FOX 13:

“There was some seats that were allegedly saved, and there was a disagreement over whether they were saved or not and an individual sitting there. This continued to escalate throughout the day.”

Weber County Sheriff’s Lt. Mark Lowther explains what happened to the man who was hit by a car:

“He ended up on the hood of the car. We did an investigation, there was conflicting stories (between the two men), but according to witness accounts there was enough probable cause to make an arrest for aggravated assault.”

Here’s a mugshot of Wayne Dodge:



Nobody was hospitalized because of the church brawl.

According to the church’s bishop: “This is a place of worship. The bottom line is we have to come back to church next Sunday.”

It’s still not clear why Wayne Dodge resorted to an outright fist fight over a simple seat saving issue.



Source: http://www.inquisitr.com/826336/wayne-dodge-starts-church-brawl-over-seat-saving-practices/#6FCT7CejuL0bWwSA.99

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Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Farewell service at Orange County's Crystal Cathedral



Associated Press
Posted: 07/01/2013 11:40:17 AM PDT
Updated: 07/01/2013 11:40:17 AM PDT



GARDEN GROVE-- More than 2,000 people gathered at Orange County's famed Crystal Cathedral for a farewell service to the Protestant congregation that helped build it into a megachurch with a worldwide following.

The Orange County Register (http://bit.ly/11XdRFZ ) says Sunday's Protestant service came a day after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange celebrated its first Mass at the storied glass cathedral. The Catholic Church purchased the church and its campus last year during bankruptcy-court proceedings.

Pastor Bobby Schuller, grandson of founder Robert H. Schuller, told his flock that Crystal Cathedral Ministries will make new memories at its new home at nearby St. Callistus Church.

The Catholic diocese has renamed the cathedral Christ Cathedral.

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Information from: The Orange County Register, http://www.ocregister.com


Source


Related:


St. Callistus Catholic Church moves to Crystal Cathedral site

St. Callistus families celebrate Mass on the former Crystal Cathedral grounds, embracing a new home nearly four times the size of their former place of worship.

June 29, 2013|By Anh Do



Deacon Guillermo Torres raises the Bible during the first Catholic Mass… (Patrick T. Fallon, For the…)


On the plaza of the future Christ Cathedral, 3,000 chairs and 7,000 water bottles awaited the faithful. On Saturday, before Mass welcomed families from St. Callistus Church to their new home, an organizer said into the microphone: "Those sitting in the sun will get more blessings from God."

The service on the grounds once belonging to the Crystal Cathedral started on time at 4 p.m., as a parade of priests led by Bishop Kevin Vann let their words — English, sprinkled with Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese — embrace the multicultural crowd.



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The Origins of Vatican Power in America



The pope and his hierarchy claim that papal or Vatican power originates from God. However, there are more earthly explanations for the origins of their power.

Editor’s note: Given this November’s US presidential election and the Catholic Church’s immense stake in the outcome, we are publishing a series of excerpts from N4CM Chairman Dr Stephen D Mumford’s book, “American Democracy and the Vatican”. In the following chapter Dr Mumford reveals the origins of Vatican power in America, as relevant and revealing today as it was when the book was first published in 1984.


Chapter 4 is here. Chapter 5 is here.Chapter 8 is here. Chapter 10 is here.





Chapter 7: The Origins of Vatican Power in America: A Guide for Population and National Security Specialists

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National Divisiveness and the Vatican

Few non-Catholic Americans understand the relationship between American Catholics and their Vatican, yet this relationship has enor­mous implications for loyal Catholics working in the population or national security fields or any other area in which the best interests of the Vatican do not invariably parallel those of the United States. This relationship is one that generates divisiveness:

Unfortunately, the Catholic people of the United States are not citizens but subjects in their own religious commonwealth. The secular as well as the religious policies of their Church are made in Rome by an organization that is alien in spirit and control. The American Catholic people themselves have no representatives of their own choosing either in their own local hierarchy or in the Roman high command; and they are compelled by the very nature of their Church’s authoritarian structure to accept nonreligious as well as religious policies that have been imposed upon them from abroad.[54]

From the Catholic Almanac:

The Catholic citizen is in conscience bound to respect and obey the duly constituted authority provided faith and morals are thereby not endangered. Under no circumstances may the Church be subjugated by the State. Whatever their form may be, states are not conceded the right to force the observance of immoral or irreligious laws upon a people.[55]

Since “morals” can define any human activity, the Vatican, accord­ingly, is the supreme ruler of the United States. As Pope Leo XIII said in his encyclical on the “Chief Duties of Christian Citizens,” setting the stage for anarchy at the pope’s command:

If the laws of the state are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church or conveying injunctions adverse to the duty imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the Supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime.[56]

The Vatican has even been divisive within the American Catho­lic Church:

Rome has always been careful not to elevate any bishopric in the United States to a position of primacy. For a time the bishops of Baltimore enjoyed a kind of primacy of honor, but even this has now disappeared. Leo XIII, instead of creating an American primate whose viewpoint and background might be fundamental­ly American, created an Apostolic Delegacy at Washington, and each succeeding Pope has sent his own representative to occupy the spacious building in Washington which, in effect, is the general Roman headquarters of American Catholicism. Since the Pope’s appointee is always an Italian, whose line of promotion runs toward Rome instead of the United States, there is little danger that he will become infected with the “heresy” of Ameri­canism.[57]
There is no doubt that the parochial school, whatever may be its virtues, is the most important divisive instrument in the life of American children. It keeps Catholic children separated from the main body of American childhood during the most impression­able years of life and develops in them a denominational narrow-mindedness.[58]
Even when both schools emphasize patriotism and community spirit, the fact that they exist as separate establishments tends to divide the community emotionally and culturally.[59]
Catholic parents must send their children to Catholic schools when they are available under moral law.[60] In other words, it is “immoral” to send Catholic children to public schools if Catholic schools are avail­able.

Catholic schools teach intolerance and oppose national solidarity when the Vatican is threatened. Abortion is an example. We need only to look to the north to observe the logical conclusion of this
arrangement:

The major lesson for the United States in the Canadian experi­ence is quite clear. A nation that compromises with the Catholic hierarchy on the control and support of common schools is doomed to be either a clerical state or a house divided. In Canada the Roman Church has built a state within a state because the British government permitted public revenue to be used for a school system that conditioned Catholic children to be Catholics first and Canadians second. Many Canadians believe that it is too late now to rescue the province of Quebec.[61]

The general rule against marriage with Protestants, Jews, and those of schismatic persuasion has served to be most divisive, since loyal Catholics tend to shun Catholics who have married outside the Church. If this rule could be strictly enforced, and the Vatican wishes it could be, it would split the American community clearly down the middle by religious bigotry.

The intolerance toward other American religions taught from childhood will ensure a continuation of divisiveness:

The Homiletic and Pastoral Review of February 1947, in answering a question for priests as to whether it is right to use the word “faith” to describe other religious groups, said: “For, if there is anything in Catholic teaching, it is the doctrine that the Son of God established only one religion and imposed on all men the obligation of embracing it; consequently no other religion has a real objective right to exist and to function, and no individual has an objective right to embrace any non-Catholic religion.”[62]

The hierarchy’s use of ethnic power bloc politics has been a major source of power in the United States for a century. Traditionally the Church used the Irish, Polish, German, and Italian Americans for this purpose. More recently, the Church has used Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Vietnamese, and Haitians. In the near future, since one-ninth of the population of El Salvador has illegally immi­grated to the United States, many of them will similarly serve the Vatican.

The Catholic Church draws upon these power blocs to manipulate both domestic and foreign policy in ways that are discussed in chapter ten. Millions of voters, wishing to maintain some cultural identity, find that their bishops “feel compelled” to speak out “on behalf of” their ethnic minority group. This is especially true where a large pro­portion of the group does not speak English. The Church then uses these power blocks to achieve its own political ambitions.

Conflict and disunity are bred by cultural and linguistic differ­ences. Bilingual education fosters these in the extreme. It is no accident that the Church has been the only significant proponent of bilingual education in the United States. Almost all recipients of bilingual education are Roman Catholic. Having created this separate cultural group, it would be the “duty” of the bishops to speak “for them.”

There is a persistent pattern of acts that create divisiveness at the international level (in the United Nations and its agencies), at nation­al, state, and local government levels, and in voluntary organizations. Through the use of the abortion issue, more than any other, the Catholic hierarchy has divided the country and has made enormous political gains, including helping to elect a president who represents the Church on all issues the hierarchy considers important (see, chapter ten).

In no other area of human activity is the Church’s use of the “divide and conquer” technique more apparent than in the population growth control field. In the remaining chapters, specific examples of their use of this technique will be provided.




P.S.

Despite the author of this article's pro-abortion views (prominently displayed here), I chose to post this chapter of his book because of the abundance of information about the Roman Catholic Church's modus operandi;  I thought it would help inform those that are ignorant of its methods.   

Arsenio.

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This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church

Note: Victims interviewed use some vulgar language on at least two occasions when describing their abuse.





Tr3Vel0cita


Uploaded on May 4, 2012

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Church sex abuse: Dolan paid problem priests to leave


Jul. 2, 2013 7:39 AM



Cardinal Timothy Dolan / Carucha L. Meuse/ The Journal News, file

Written by
M.L. JOHNSON
Associated Press



MILWAUKEE — Then-Archbishop of Milwaukee Timothy Dolan wrote a letter in 2003 to the Vatican office overseeing clergy sex abuse cases begging it to remove a priest who had repeatedly abused children, showed no remorse and at least once engaged in sexual activity with a young boy, the child’s mother and her female friend.

The archdiocese provided the priest with counseling and alcohol abuse treatment, limited his job assignments, eventually ordering him to stop dressing as a priest and barring him from seminary buildings. It only received more reports of abuse.

In 2003, nearly 40 years after some of the earliest reported abuse took place, Dolan, now New York cardinal, sought permission to have the priest, Daniel Budzynski, officially defrocked. Despite the egregiousness of the priest’s crimes, the Vatican office in charge of sex abuse cases, then led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, took more than a year to formally dismiss him.

The correspondence was made public Monday along with thousands of pages of other documents detailing sex abuse by dozens of priests in the archdiocese covering southeastern Wisconsin. The documents were released as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court between the archdiocese and victims suing it for fraud. Victims have accused the archdiocese of transferring abusive priests to new churches without warning parishioners and covering up their crimes for decades.

The Budzynski case was among at least a half-dozen Dolan inherited when he took over the archdiocese in 2002 amid the growing clergy abuse scandal. It shows some of the difficulty church leaders had in dealing with serial molesters and a church bureaucracy that in many cases sat on pleas for priests’ removal for years.

While other church leaders, including Dolan’s predecessor, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, have acknowledged they didn’t immediately grasp the extent of the problem, Dolan appears to have quickly determined a crisis was in the making. He moved to push out problem priests, even paying them to leave the priesthood, and later acted to protect church assets by transferring $57 million from a cemetery fund into a trust as the archdiocese moved toward bankruptcy.

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New Chinese law: Visit your parents

By Meng Meng and Katie Hunt, for CNN
updated 3:07 AM EDT, Tue July 2, 2013





Hong Kong (CNN) -- Lola Wang, a 28-year-old marketing officer in Shanghai, makes a six-hour trip to Shandong to see her parents twice a year -- once during the Lunar New Year and again during the National Day holiday in October.

"I feel like I should visit my parents more but having a job in the financial industry means I have to work long hours and sacrifice some of my personal time for work," Wang, an only child, tells CNN.

Wang's dilemma is faced by many young people in China, where a one-child policy and three decades of economic reforms have accelerated the decline of the traditional extended family.

It's also a matter of concern for China's new leaders as they grapple with the burden of supporting the growing number of elderly people.

New law

A new national law introduced this week requires the offspring of parents older than 60 to visit their parents "frequently" and make sure their financial and spiritual needs are met.

"People are accusing young people of not visiting their parents enough," says Wang, adding she agrees with the aims of the law.

"Admittedly, some of them use their career and long working hours as an excuse. My problems are that I do care about my parents, but I have little vacation and my parents live far away."

READ: China elderly facing HIV/AIDS crisis

According to Xinhua, China had about 185 million people above the age of 60 at the end of 2011. The figure is expected to surge to 221 million in 2015 and by 2050 a third of China's population will be classed as elderly.

Neglect

The "Law of Protection of Rights and Interests of the Aged" was amended by China's legislature in December after a spate of reports about elderly parents neglected by their children.

In one particularly horrific case in Jiangsu province, a local television station reported that a farmer had kept his 100-year-old mother in a pigsty with a 440lb sow.

Chen Shoutian told the station his mother had been happy to live there: "She wants to stay here because she feels it is convenient," he said.

A modest pension and social welfare system, particularly in rural areas, means elderly people are usually dependent on their children for support.

More than a fifth live below the poverty line, according to figures from the National School of Development at Peking University.

Changing values

Although respect for the elderly is still deeply engrained in Chinese society, traditional values like filial piety have been weakened by the country's rush to modernity.

"The traditional family support system is eroding for many reasons and I think the government would like to slow this process down," said Albert Park, the director of the Emerging Markets Institute at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

READ: Forget Gangnam style; Chinese farmer does 'Grandpa style'

The law stipulates that children cannot give up their inheritance rights in attempt to evade their duty to take care of their parents. It adds that children should pay a monthly allowance to their parents if they refuse to take care of them.

The legislation also allows for the elderly to sue their children but does not specify the process or what penalties they might face.

It may also prove difficult to enforce, says Ding Yiyuan from Beijing Yingke Law Firm. He told the Guangzhou Daily newspaper the law fails to qualify the word "frequently." He added that few elderly people were likely to sue their own children.

Controversial

The law's introduction has proved controversial. Some say it puts too much pressure on those who move away from home for work, study or other opportunities.

Cheng Zhegang, 50, whose only child is studying for a master's degree in the United States, said the law "distorts the parent-child relationship."

He hopes his daughter will head to a big city like Shanghai or Beijing to find a job on graduation and not return to the small town where she grew up.

"I don't want my daughter to have a burden both physically and spiritually," he told CNN.

"For me, my daughter's career is the most important thing. As the parent of an only child, I have spent so much time and money on my daughter's education and now I want her to be successful."


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Sodom, Gomorrah and United States of America



June 28, 2013 2:00 AM

June 26 — To the Editor:

The United States of America was laid upon a constitutional foundation and a Declaration of Independence proclaiming that the rights of men were from God and not other men. On this 26th day of June in the year of our Lord 2013, the Supreme Court decreed that America no longer holds God as the supreme and final authority on law and morals. On this Wednesday, the court established itself above its creator. Now, all who believe that this is one nation under God are declared bigots. Those of us who believe that God Himself instituted and decreed marriage in the Garden of Eden are now at odds with society. The law will now punish those who stand for God's order and law. No longer will we be able to sing "God Bless America" and have any hope that He will do so. Most think that the stories in the Bible are myths and just old Jewish fables with no relevance to today. However, if they are, in fact, true — as millions believe and as America once believed — then America has, through its Supreme Court, voted to remove the blessings of God from our land.

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of homosexuality and the Tribe of Benjamin (one of the 12 tribes of Israel) was nearly annihilated due to the homosexuality rampant in their midst. God told the other tribes to attack Benjamin for its perversion. The Roman Empire finally succumbed due to its perverse practices.

Never before have I been glad that my years left on Earth are less than the years already behind me, for I am watching the decline and destruction of this once great and good nation as it descends into the pit of perversion and as it shakes its fist in the face of God and declares, "We shall be as God, knowing both good and evil." One man on the radio today called Washington, D.C., "an overflowing toilet." It seems he is right. We may have one hope left — that the stench will finally reach the nostrils of people and they will awake to the filth.

William D. Tappan

Eliot, Maine


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* Genesis 3:5
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Revealing God's Treasure - Sodom & Gomorrah




sygnate

Uploaded on May 6, 2008


See ashen formations, brimstone, cremated bone in the cities destroyed by the wrath of God along the Dead Sea.

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