For the 2,000th post since the inception of CIVICS NEWS in early 2008 (when it functioned as a current events log for my high school classes!), it is fitting that the honor go to...drum roll...Greg Boyd.
Boyd's book The Myth of a Christian Nation is a MUST-read, and this audio file that I just finished listening to should not be missed by anybody who wants to take seriously what it means to be a Christian.
The title of his message is, "What Does a Christian Look Like?" Download the audio here and enjoy on your iPod or your lap top. Boyd wrestles with issues such as nationalism & the kingdom of God, how to look at every human being as loved by God (and how this impacts our politics and militarism), and much, much more. Boyd confronts the issue of the relation of Christians to human governments in an up-front and Christ-centered manner. His message is unquestionably biblical. He will make us uncomfortable (as I'm sure his articles previously posted did), but that's a good thing.
CIVICS NEWS has by and large been devoted to chronicling the evils of the state in order to wake people up to the fact that we should not put our trust in princes (politicians), but instead in Christ. I want to make an effort beginning with this post, the 2,000th post, to bring in more material that points us to Christ and his Kingdom, in addition to pointing us away from Satan and his kingdoms.
What does "Christ and his Kingdom" mean, exactly? Perhaps you are not particularly religious and you don't look forward to a bunch of religious jargon and Christian cliches. Well, start by listening to Boyd's "What does a Christian Look Like?" Much more will come, but the simple principle is love. We believe not only that there is a Creator God, but that this God IS LOVE, a concept that I'm sure most Christians don't grasp, as I myself have not actually understood it until recently, and even now, dimly so. If you're typically offended or annoyed by religion, this will be one message that I'm confident you can buy into and agree with. Stick around and see what you think.
The news coverage will continue in the same libertarian, watch-dog posture, since governments will continue to oppress and steal and kill, and we Christians should be out front calling it what it is, disassociating Christ from those evils, and even being non-violently politically active to help to roll back the violent oppression of the state. These aims will still remain, but I hope to bring in more material about the Kingdom of Love and the character of our Lord in addition to the news coverage. Enjoy Boyd's audio message.
Scott
7/31/09
Good news: Government losing credibility
[UPDATE: 8/16, the numbers are even worse now. See here.]
As Obama tries his best to sell socialism (i.e. stealing) to the American people, his job approval ratings are falling to record lows for a president at this point in his term (yes, even lower than Bush or Carter at this time in their presidencies). Among those who have strong feelings about the president, here are the results as reported by Rasmussen:
Maybe as the government loses credibility, people will no longer look to the state as savior, but instead to Christ. Keep exposing the evil of the beastly kingdoms of this world and pointing people to the pure lamb of God.
Here Ron Paul responds to critics of the Audit-the-Fed bill. As usual, the pro-Fed forces are distorting the truth about what this bill does. I think the American people have a hunch as to why the Fed wants to stay secret. I know I posted this verse just the other day, but it's so pertinant to this bill. John 3:20-21 "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
As Obama tries his best to sell socialism (i.e. stealing) to the American people, his job approval ratings are falling to record lows for a president at this point in his term (yes, even lower than Bush or Carter at this time in their presidencies). Among those who have strong feelings about the president, here are the results as reported by Rasmussen:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 28% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12.At the same time as Obama's personal ratings are falling through the floor, Americans in general are not happy with the current world that the government has created.
And how about the Federal Reserve? Do Americans really think Obama runs things, or are we waking up to the fact that we're being looted and our economic woes owe their gratitude to the corrupting influence of the Fed? Good news: yes we are waking up to this. Of 9 key federal agencies (including the hated IRS), the Fed has the lowest job approval rating: only 30% of Americans approve of the job the Federal Reserve is doing. And on the flip side, a full 75% want an audit of the Fed.Forty-nine percent (49%) now say that America’s best days have come and gone.
Just 38% believe they are still to come. Thirty-four percent (34%) say the
country is heading in the right direction.
Maybe as the government loses credibility, people will no longer look to the state as savior, but instead to Christ. Keep exposing the evil of the beastly kingdoms of this world and pointing people to the pure lamb of God.
Here Ron Paul responds to critics of the Audit-the-Fed bill. As usual, the pro-Fed forces are distorting the truth about what this bill does. I think the American people have a hunch as to why the Fed wants to stay secret. I know I posted this verse just the other day, but it's so pertinant to this bill. John 3:20-21 "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
7/30/09
The Swine Flu Vaccine: Mercury, Money, and Madness
UPDATE 8/28/09 From YourSpine.com: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has officially stated that there will be as many as 30,000 serious, potentially lethal adverse reactions to the novel H1N1 vaccine, while the FDA guidelines for the novel H1N1 vaccine only require that it work in 3 out of every 10 recipients.
UPDATE 8/27/09 From Bild.de: German health expert, "Wolfgang Wodarg has said that there are many risks associated with the vaccine for the H1N1 virus. [...] The nutrient solution for the vaccine consists of cancerous cells from animals [...] Wodrag also described people’s fear of the pandemic as an 'orchestration': 'It is great business for the pharmaceutical industry,' he told the ‘Neuen Presse’. Swine flu is not very different from normal flu. 'On the contrary if you look at the number of cases it is nothing compared to a normal flu outbreak,' he added."
UPDATE 8/25/09: The majority of UK doctors in polls would reject this vaccine if asked to take it, themselves.
UPDATE 8/6/09: Add to the littany of craziness below the following report out of
Natural News: Diseased African Monkeys Used to Make Swine Flu Vaccines; Private Military Contractor Holds Key Patents. This is serious stuff.
In reference to the Swine Flu vaccine soon coming your way, today's Washington Post reports that the bulk of the vaccines will be brought to you swimming in thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that contains MERCURY. Do I need to comment any further? I hope you know what mercury does to the brain.
Is this a science fiction nightmare? This past spring, the government hypes a non-event known as the Swine Flu "crisis," scaring the living daylights out of the population. Then an un-tested vaccine is going to hit the market with mercury in it, a leading suspect in the cause of soaring rates of autism. In addition to all of this, 12,000 children in Oklahoma will be used as guinea pigs in the first round of shots. Then you've got the Arkansas State Health Department openly stating that he thinks forced vaccination is entirely legal and constitutional. And we even have a health care bill that includes a key clause providing for "home visits" by government "task forces" that will "implement interventions" in order to "improve immunization coverage of children." Yes, you read that correctly; home visits and forced vaccinations known as "interventions" could be in the not-too-distant future. The government of Greece, New York State, and the University of Alabama are all leading the way in the trend of FORCED VACCINATIONS! And the federal government is making preparations to use the swine flu as a pretext for martial law.
Also, it is interesting that the mainstream media coverage of the swine flu vaccine all revolves around the issue of "who gets to have the vaccine first?", as if the vaccine is something that is unquestionably desirable. The propaganda they're putting out about the vaccines is reminiscent of the Christmas toy routine--act like there's not enough of something and everybody will want it!
Remember that last time there was a swine flu scare, in the 1970s, vaccines were rolled out and pushed on the public, and the result was that more people (thousands!) apparently died from the vaccines than the flu! And many more were paralyzed from the vaccinations.
Mike Adams at Natural News adds a few things that we should consider about vaccinations in general and the swine flu vaccine in particular:
Last of all, but certainly not least importantly of all, the role of vaccines in the decades-old Population Reduction Agenda must be soberly considered by all Americans as we head into this fall, the time when the Secretary of Homeland Security has said will bring the...fear now!!...EPIDEMIC!#1 - The vaccine production was "rushed" and the vaccine has never been tested on humans. Do you like to play guinea pig for Big Pharma? If so, line up for your swine flu vaccine this fall...
#2 - Swine flu vaccines contain dangerous adjuvants that cause an inflammatory response in the body. This is why they are suspected of causing autism and other
neurological disorders.#3 - The swine flu vaccine could actually increase your risk of death from swine flu by altering (or suppressing) your immune system response. There is zero evidence that even seasonal flu shots offer any meaningful protection for people who take the jabs. Vaccines are the snake oil of modern medicine.
#4 - Doctors still don't know why the 1976 swine flu vaccines paralyzed so many people. And that means they really have no clue whether the upcoming vaccine might cause the same devastating side effects. (And they're not testing it, either...)
#5 - Even if the swine flu vaccine kills you, the drug companies aren't responsible. The U.S. government has granted drug companies complete immunity against vaccine product liability. Thanks to that blanket immunity, drug companies have no incentive to make safe vaccines, because they only get paid based on quantity, not safety (zero liability).
"Homeland Security" to deepen and widen under Obama
CIVICS NEWS Comment: Nimmo makes reference to the trend where law enforcement and Homeland Security consider regular Americans and the politically involved to be extremists and terrorists. Here's a bunch of articles providing the details about what he's refering to: They Consider us ALL...Terrorists (And here's the youtube of Napolitano speaking to the CFR, the subject of this article)...
Napolitano Reports to CFR on Stasi Snoop Network
Kurt Nimmo - Infowars - July 29, 2009
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano traveled to New York to deliver a speech to the boss today. She told the Council on Foreign Relations there will be no departure from the Bush administration in regard to homeland security. It will be the same agenda with a few minor changes — for instance, the color-coded threat advisory will be chucked.
“Napolitano sang the praises of counter-terrorism intelligence being shared between federal, state and local agencies through arrangements known as fusion centers,” writes Frank James for NPR. Napolitano said she plans “to make them a top priority for this department to support them, build them, improve them and work with them.”
Translation: the feds will continue the full-steam ahead effort to federalize state and local law enforcement, an effort that began in earnest under Bill Clinton and picked up critical momentum during the reign of George W. Bush.
“Napolitano sounded just like her predecessors Ridge and Michael Chertoff,” James continues. “And she talked about educating the populace about how to be the eyes and ears of counter-terrorism and also how to respond to the aftermath of man-made or natural disasters,” or for that matter government contrived false flag operations.
Napolitano told the internationalist cabal in New York that the American people suffer from “complacency” and this is a “threat in the United States.” In order to combat complacency, the government has to do more to “educate” the public on the threat posed by terrorists and other miscreants. In other words, Napolitano admitted the incessant warnings of impending doom — from dirty bombs in major cities to bad guys taking out nuclear plants — have not worked.
Napolitano said the public has to be recruited, sort of like the public was recruited in East Germany by the Stasi. “For too long we’ve treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than an asset in our nation’s collective security,” she declared. Napolitano said the country’s “counter-terrorism efforts” should include the public, that “you are the ones who know if something is not right in your communities, such as a suspicious package, or unusual activities.”
Of course, “unusual activities” are in the eye of the beholder, especially a beholder that has endured nearly a decade of incessant propaganda about terrorism, most of it entirely fictional and bogus.
“To an intelligence agent, informant, or law enforcement officer,” Bruce Fein, of Bruce Fein & Associates and The Lichfield Group, said earlier this year, “everything unconventional or unorthodox looks like at least a pre-embryonic terrorist danger.” According to Fein, using the standards proposed by the Department of Homeland Security and fusion centers scattered around the country, everyone from the Founding Fathers to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to suffragette Susan B. Anthony would have been the subject of SARs, or suspicious activity reports.
Now SARs and intelligence reports are filed on the supporters of Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin, as a fusion center report produced by the Missouri State Police indicated earlier this year. Napolitano’s DHS produced a report of its own on “rightwing extremism” that characterized militia members, Second Amendment advocates, returning veterans, pro-life and anti-illegal immigration activists as terrorists.
In addition to fostering a snoop culture, Janet Napolitano told the CFR her agency wants to “get to a point where we are in a constant state of preparedness, not a constant state of fear.” In order to do this, the government and its enlisted army of snoops, stool pigeons, and rat finks need to “monitor home-grown threats.” [...]
7/29/09
White House science advisor called for de-developing the U.S. economy
CIVICS NEWS Comment: This John Holdren is the same Holdren from this post, where it was exposed that Holdren also called for forced population-reduction through means that you'd have to read to believe.
White House Science Adviser Advocated 'De-Development' of the United States
CNS - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - Christopher Neefus
(CNSNews.com) – President Obama’s top science adviser, John P. Holdren, advocated the "de-development" of the United States in books he published in the 1970s.
"A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States," Holdren wrote in a 1973 book he co-authored with Paul R. Ehrlch and Anne H. Ehrlich. "De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation."
In the vision expressed by Holdren and his co-authors, the Ehrlichs, the need for "de-development" of the United States demanded a redistribtuion of wealth.
"The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge," they wrote. "They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided to every human being."
Holdren, who is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, made these comments in the 1973 book "Human Ecology," which he co-authored with the Ehrlichs, long-time advocates of curtailing population growth.
Over the years, Holdren has co-authored or co-edited a number of books and articles with Paul Ehrlich.
In the 1977 science textbook, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," which Holdren also co-authored with the Ehrlichs, the authors again presented their idea for "de-development."
The 1973 book, "Human Ecology," argued that humanity would face environmental calamity if population growth was not curbed.
The authors' call "to de-develop the United States" came in the book's final chapter, under the heading, "Synthesis and Recommendations."
In "Ecoscience," which was used as a college textbook, Holdren and his coauthors expanded on the notion of de-development.
The book contains lengthy chapters on natural processes like nutrient cycles and energy consumption as well as information on global demographics and the nature and history of world hunger.
There are also chapters detailing potential ways to remedy what the authors perceived as the problem of overpopulation, including restructuring American and international institutions.
In a chapter entitled “Rich Nations, Poor Nations, and International Conflict,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote: “The most critical change of all must be a change in goals; all people, rich and poor alike, must come to recognize that being a citizen of a giant, smoggy, freeway-strangled industrial state is not necessary to being a happy, healthy, fulfilled human being.”
According to the authors, developed countries should not “train their own people to think of the power lawn mower and automatic icemaker as the finest achievements of humanity.”
“It is therefore apparent,” they said, “that one key to saving world society lies in a measured and orderly retreat from overdevelopment in today’s ODCs (overdeveloped countries)--a process we will label, for want of a better word, de-development.”
The Ehrlichs have called "Ecoscience" an "encyclopedic textbook where description can be misrepresented as endorsement.”
But Holdren and his co-authors plainly depict the de-development of industrialized nations as a global policy priority.
“As we see it, de-development of the ODCs should be given top priority,” they wrote on page 926.
“Only when that course is firmly established, will there be any real hope for all of humanity to generate a worldwide spirit of cooperation rather than competition and to plan the development of our (planet) with the holistic perspective that is so essential to the survival of civilization," they wrote. "Only then can consumption in the (less developed countries) be linked both psychologically and physically to production in the ODCs and a substantial transfer of wealth accomplished.”
On the following page, the authors lamented that some scientists and engineers, who they labeled “technologists,” would reject their idea of de-developing countries like the United States [...]
Christian secret group, "The Family," a key power nexus
CIVICS NEWS Comment: Jeff Sharlet's book The Family has just hit the top of my reading list. I thought I knew a thing or two about powerful secretive organizations like the Bohemian Grove, the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Skull and Bones Society. But having just listened to an eye-opening interview with Jeff Sharlet, I know that the "Christian" network of the powerful, known as The Family, is one group that I need to learn more about. In the interview (definitely not recounted in the article below), Sharlet, the leading expert on the group, discussed how they have their tentacles reaching in the most powerful of places, exercising influence upon even Hillary Clinton and the current National Security Advisor. The Family is a group that also interlocks with other secretive organizations such as the occult (and very homosexual) Bohemian Grove, as well as the Roman Catholic secret society, Opus Dei. It is impossible to understand how power is acquired and exercised without grasping the role of so-called "secret societies," or better yet, simply, the social networks of the power elite. Enough said...here's an article out of The Week on this group, The Family (though quite watered down compared to Sharlet's expose). Notice the religion of these "Christians" is not about living like Christ taught us to live, but quite the opposite; their religion is power. Not surprising since their founders admired Stalin and Hitler.
D.C.’s ‘invisible army’ for Christ
The Family, a little-known religious group, has been getting some unwanted publicity. What do they believe?
What is the Family?
It’s the most well-connected religious organization that no one talks about. Formed in 1935 by an itinerant preacher, Norwegian immigrant Abraham Vereide, the Family has grown into “a veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government,” in the words of Family member and evangelical minister Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate conspirator. The Washington-based group counts many prominent politicians, mostly conservative Republicans, among its flock, and several members of Congress pay $600 a month to rent rooms in the group’s townhouse on C Street, near the U.S. Capitol. There are Family “prayer cells” in many federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the Justice Department. The Family tries to maintain a low profile (see below), but was thrust into the headlines in recent weeks when it emerged that three politicians embroiled in sex scandals—South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering—are longtime members. Pickering, in fact, last week was accused in court papers of having trysts with his mistress in the C Street house.
Are all members politicians?
No. While members include Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, many business leaders and military officers are also involved. “We work with power where we can,” Doug Coe, 81, the group’s leader since 1969, said in a rare interview in 2002, “and build power where we can’t.” The Family’s only high-profile endeavor is the National Prayer Breakfast, at which world leaders gather each year in Washington for a morning of nondenominational worship; but the Family always stays in the background, and many participants have no idea that the group is even involved.
What does the Family believe?
Its theology is vague, elastic, and focused on power. The basic precepts came to Vereide in a vision in 1935, according to the group’s literature. Living in Seattle, he came to believe that union organizing in the city was communist-inspired. Jesus appeared to him in the form of the president of U.S. Steel, who told him to gather “key men”—prominent businessmen and political leaders—to beat back the unions in His name. Vereide’s recruiting efforts spread eastward, and in 1941 he arrived in Washington, where he began cultivating friendships with powerful people and setting up prayer groups. By then, Vereide was convinced that conventional Christianity had it backwards: Instead of ministering to the down-and-out, Jesus wanted believers to tend to the “up-and-out”—members of America’s elite who lacked intimacy with Jesus. In Vereide’s worldview, free-market capitalism is divinely ordained, and unions and regulations are a form of blasphemy.
What about personal morality?
It’s not the most important consideration. “The people involved in this association are the worst and the best,” Coe says. “Some are total despots, some are totally religious.” The mere fact that they are powerful means they have God’s favor, argues Coe, citing a line from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Scholar Jeff Sharlet, author of the authoritative book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, explains the theology this way: As long as the powerful develop a close relationship with Jesus, “then they will dispense blessings to those underneath them. It’s a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism.” The theology stems from Vereide’s belief than only “key men” can change the world, and only with Jesus’ guidance will they change it for the better. The Family believes in a “total Jesus,” who pervades every thought and action.
Does the Family excuse adultery and other sins?
Not exactly, but it considers the powerful to be accountable only to God and their peers, not to their constituents or the Constitution. Coe speaks often of the biblical King David, who slept with another man’s wife, then ordered the cuckolded husband into battle, effectively sentencing him to death. Yet despite his personal failings, David was one of God’s chosen, and his reign was a blessing to the Israelites. When Gov. Sanford invoked King David to explain why he wouldn’t resign over his adulterous relationship with an Argentine woman, “you could almost hear Doug’s voice,” says Sharlet, who considers the Family’s disregard for conventional morality “potentially very dangerous,” because it “leads you away from accountability to the public.”
Is the Family a threat?
Few in Washington seem too worried. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken part in Family activities despite her liberal politics, and has called Coe “a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.” The first President Bush called Coe an “ambassador of faith.” Supporters also note that Family members helped convince President Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin to call for a worldwide day of prayer to usher in the Camp David Peace Accords. And members helped broker a 2001 peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Such successes, Family members say, demonstrate the group’s good intentions. “There’s nothing sinister here, no dark secrets,” says former Rep. Tony Hall of Ohio. “It’s the exact opposite of what Washington is about.”
Secrecy by design
Family members quickly learn that the first rule of the Family is not to talk about it. In 1966, Vereide, who referred to his following as an “invisible army,” decreed that the Family should “submerge the institutional image” of the group—a policy maintained by Coe. As Coe once said in a sermon, “the Family functions invisibly like the Mafia. The more you can make your organization invisible, the more influence it will have.” Family members organize themselves into small “cells” that are, in the group’s own words, “publicly invisible and privately identifiable.” Coe has expressed admiration for the way such leaders as Adolf Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, and Osama bin Laden organized followers into small groups that shared a “covenant.” With a covenant, he says, “two or three people can do anything.” Where those leaders went wrong, he says, was in not making their covenants in Jesus’ name.
John 3:20-21 "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
D.C.’s ‘invisible army’ for Christ
The Family, a little-known religious group, has been getting some unwanted publicity. What do they believe?
What is the Family?
It’s the most well-connected religious organization that no one talks about. Formed in 1935 by an itinerant preacher, Norwegian immigrant Abraham Vereide, the Family has grown into “a veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government,” in the words of Family member and evangelical minister Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate conspirator. The Washington-based group counts many prominent politicians, mostly conservative Republicans, among its flock, and several members of Congress pay $600 a month to rent rooms in the group’s townhouse on C Street, near the U.S. Capitol. There are Family “prayer cells” in many federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the Justice Department. The Family tries to maintain a low profile (see below), but was thrust into the headlines in recent weeks when it emerged that three politicians embroiled in sex scandals—South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering—are longtime members. Pickering, in fact, last week was accused in court papers of having trysts with his mistress in the C Street house.
Are all members politicians?
No. While members include Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, many business leaders and military officers are also involved. “We work with power where we can,” Doug Coe, 81, the group’s leader since 1969, said in a rare interview in 2002, “and build power where we can’t.” The Family’s only high-profile endeavor is the National Prayer Breakfast, at which world leaders gather each year in Washington for a morning of nondenominational worship; but the Family always stays in the background, and many participants have no idea that the group is even involved.
What does the Family believe?
Its theology is vague, elastic, and focused on power. The basic precepts came to Vereide in a vision in 1935, according to the group’s literature. Living in Seattle, he came to believe that union organizing in the city was communist-inspired. Jesus appeared to him in the form of the president of U.S. Steel, who told him to gather “key men”—prominent businessmen and political leaders—to beat back the unions in His name. Vereide’s recruiting efforts spread eastward, and in 1941 he arrived in Washington, where he began cultivating friendships with powerful people and setting up prayer groups. By then, Vereide was convinced that conventional Christianity had it backwards: Instead of ministering to the down-and-out, Jesus wanted believers to tend to the “up-and-out”—members of America’s elite who lacked intimacy with Jesus. In Vereide’s worldview, free-market capitalism is divinely ordained, and unions and regulations are a form of blasphemy.
What about personal morality?
It’s not the most important consideration. “The people involved in this association are the worst and the best,” Coe says. “Some are total despots, some are totally religious.” The mere fact that they are powerful means they have God’s favor, argues Coe, citing a line from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Scholar Jeff Sharlet, author of the authoritative book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, explains the theology this way: As long as the powerful develop a close relationship with Jesus, “then they will dispense blessings to those underneath them. It’s a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism.” The theology stems from Vereide’s belief than only “key men” can change the world, and only with Jesus’ guidance will they change it for the better. The Family believes in a “total Jesus,” who pervades every thought and action.
Does the Family excuse adultery and other sins?
Not exactly, but it considers the powerful to be accountable only to God and their peers, not to their constituents or the Constitution. Coe speaks often of the biblical King David, who slept with another man’s wife, then ordered the cuckolded husband into battle, effectively sentencing him to death. Yet despite his personal failings, David was one of God’s chosen, and his reign was a blessing to the Israelites. When Gov. Sanford invoked King David to explain why he wouldn’t resign over his adulterous relationship with an Argentine woman, “you could almost hear Doug’s voice,” says Sharlet, who considers the Family’s disregard for conventional morality “potentially very dangerous,” because it “leads you away from accountability to the public.”
Is the Family a threat?
Few in Washington seem too worried. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken part in Family activities despite her liberal politics, and has called Coe “a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.” The first President Bush called Coe an “ambassador of faith.” Supporters also note that Family members helped convince President Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin to call for a worldwide day of prayer to usher in the Camp David Peace Accords. And members helped broker a 2001 peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Such successes, Family members say, demonstrate the group’s good intentions. “There’s nothing sinister here, no dark secrets,” says former Rep. Tony Hall of Ohio. “It’s the exact opposite of what Washington is about.”
Secrecy by design
Family members quickly learn that the first rule of the Family is not to talk about it. In 1966, Vereide, who referred to his following as an “invisible army,” decreed that the Family should “submerge the institutional image” of the group—a policy maintained by Coe. As Coe once said in a sermon, “the Family functions invisibly like the Mafia. The more you can make your organization invisible, the more influence it will have.” Family members organize themselves into small “cells” that are, in the group’s own words, “publicly invisible and privately identifiable.” Coe has expressed admiration for the way such leaders as Adolf Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, and Osama bin Laden organized followers into small groups that shared a “covenant.” With a covenant, he says, “two or three people can do anything.” Where those leaders went wrong, he says, was in not making their covenants in Jesus’ name.
Swine flu could be used as pretext for martial law
Military To Work With FEMA During Swine Flu Pandemic
CNN report stokes fears of martial law, mandatory vaccination program
Paul Joseph Watson - Prison Planet.com - Wednesday, July 29, 2009
According to a CNN report, the military will assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant swine flu outbreak in the U.S. this fall, stoking fears that the pandemic, which has claimed relatively few lives so far, will be used as an excuse to implement martial law and a mandatory vaccination program.
“The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would likely include personnel from all branches of the military,” states the report.
The proposal, which was drawn up by U.S. Northern Command’s Gen. Victor Renuart, is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The first step would be to sign an “execution order” which would authorize the military to begin detailed planning on how to implement the proposal, before actual orders to deploy military personnel are given.
The amount of troops required or whether they would come from the active duty or the National Guard and Reserve forces has not yet been determined.
Northcom has been preparing for mass flu pandemics for years and indeed, Gen. Victor Renuart spoke of the threat of a flu pandemic emerging out of Mexico just weeks before it actually happened.
Testifying back in March, Renuart said Northcom would provide “assistance in support of civil authorities” during an epidemic, adding “when requested and approved by the Secretary of Defense or directed by the President, federal military forces will contribute to federal support.” However, Renuart then added, “USNorthCom does not wait for that call to action.”
“Because Mexico is our neighbor and disasters do not respect national boundaries, we are focused on developing and improving procedures to respond to potentially catastrophic events such as pandemic influenza outbreak, mass exposure to dangerous chemicals and materials, and natural disasters,” he testified.
Northcom was only relatively recently assigned its own fighting unit – the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, which had been fighting in Iraq for five years before that. As we have previously reported, the Armed Forces Press Service has initiated a propaganda campaign designed to convince the American people that deploying the 3rd Infantry Division in the United States in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is a good thing, with images of soldiers from the brigade helping in “humanitarian” rescue missions, such as car wrecks. This is all designed to condition Americans to accept troops on the streets and highways as a part of everyday life.
The assignment of the 1st Brigade Combat Team to Northcom alarmed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “This is a radical departure from separation of civilian law enforcement and military authority and could, quite possibly, represent a violation of law,” said Mike German, ACLU national security policy counsel.
The news that troops are being prepared to work with FEMA in the event of a swine flu pandemic will increase fears that the government is preparing to enforce a mandatory vaccination program – at gunpoint if necessary.
State health authorities have already confirmed that if the government were to announce a mandatory vaccination program, then there would be no exemptions whatsoever and the program could be carried out with the use of force if necessary.
As reported by CNS News earlier this month, a health-care reform bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee called The Affordable Health Choices Act, will fund the creation of state “intervention” teams that will carry out home visits in order to check that both children and adults have been vaccinated and also provide “provision of immunizations”.
“Home visits? What exactly is the state going to do when it sends people to “implement interventions” in private homes designed “to improve immunization coverage of children”? asks the CNS report.
There can be little doubt that many Americans will call upon their second amendment rights and resort to using force to protect themselves and their children if the government attempts to forcibly impose a mass vaccination program. This is why the assistance of military personnel may be necessary to subdue potential resistors in the event of mandatory quarantines and inoculations.
The last time the the national guard and military worked with FEMA and local law enforcement on a large scale in the United States was during Hurricane Katrina, when they aided in the confiscation of privately owned firearms of citizens, even those who lived in the high and dry areas and were unaffected by the hurricane.
7/28/09
Ron Paul on stealing from people in order to kill
The Immorality of Taxpayer Funded Abortion
Ron Paul - Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Healthcare continues to dominate the agenda on Capitol Hill as House leadership and the administration try to ram through their big government healthcare plan. Fortunately, they have been unsuccessful so far, as there are many horrifying provisions tucked into this massive piece of legislation. One major issue is the public funding of elective abortions. The administration has already removed many longstanding restrictions on abortion, and is unwilling to provide straight answers to questions regarding the public funding of abortion in their plan. This is deeply troubling for those of us who do not want taxpayer dollars funding abortions.
Forcing pro-life taxpayers to subsidize abortion is evil and tyrannical. I have introduced the Taxpayer’s Freedom of Conscience Act (HR 1233) which forbids the use of any taxpayer funds for abortion, both here and overseas.
The most basic function of government is to protect life. It is unconscionable that government would enable the taking of it. However this is to be expected when government oversteps its constitutional bounds instead of protecting rights. When government supercedes this very limited role, it cannot help but advance the moral agenda of whoever is in power at the time, at the expense of the rights of others.
Free people should be left alone to follow their conscience and determine their own lifestyle as long as they do not interfere with other people doing the same. If morality is dictated by government, morality will change with every election. Even if you agree with the morality of the current politicians and think their ideas should be advanced, someday different people will inherit that power and use it for their own agendas. The wisdom of the constitution is that it keeps government out of these issues altogether.
Many say we must reform healthcare and treat it as a right, because that is the moral thing to do. Poor people should not go without healthcare in a just society. But too many forget the immorality of stealing from others in order to make this so. They also forget the morality and compassion that naturally exists in communities when government is not fomenting class warfare with wealth redistribution programs.
Many doctors willingly volunteer, accept barter or reduced payment from patients who can’t pay, or give away services for free. Many charities help the poor with food, housing and healthcare. These charities are much more responsive and accountable for helping people in need than government ever could be. This is the moral way that private individuals voluntarily deal with access to healthcare, but government intervention threatens to pull the rug out from this sort of volunteerism and replace it with mandates, taxes, red tape, wealth redistribution, and force.
The fact that the national healthcare overhaul could force taxpayers to subsidize abortions and may even force private insurers to cover abortions is more reason that this bill and the ideas behind it, are neither constitutional, moral, nor in the American people’s best interest.
Fed "independence" amounts to secrecy and looting
U.S. Senator Slams Washington Post Defense Of Fed Secrecy
Steve Watson - Infowars.net - Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), sponsor of S 604, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009, has slammed a recent Washington Post editorial that contends the Federal Reserve should not be subject to a general audit.
Sanders vented his opinions in a letter to the editor which was published in the Post today.
“We must not equate ‘independence’ with secrecy.” Sanders writes in response to the Post’s Friday editorial entitled “Focus on the Fed” which attacked his own and Congressman Ron Paul’s efforts to enact the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, a move that would allow the American people to find out for the first time where trillions in taxpayer funded bailout dollars have been used.
“No matter how intelligent or well-intentioned the Fed chairman and his staff may be, it isn’t appropriate to give a handful of people the power to lend an unlimited supply of money to anyone it wants without sufficient oversight.” Sanders writes.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The American people have a right to know what is being done with their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. This money does not belong to the Fed; it belongs to the American people.” Sanders urges.
The Washington Post’s editorial angered many readers late last week by essentially advocating the continuation of non-accountability in government.
“Though the bill has attracted 276 co-sponsors in the House and 17 in the Senate, it is wrongheaded in the extreme.” the Post’s anonymously written piece stated.
“By opening up the Fed’s most sensitive interest rate and credit policies to public second-guessing, the bill would create a risk — real and perceived — of monetary policy bent to suit congressional overseers. This would destroy financial markets’ faith in the Fed and, by extension, the value of the U.S. dollar, just as surely as a political ‘audit’ of the Supreme Court’s deliberations would undercut public faith in the justice system.” the piece claimed.
“This article makes comparisons that are utterly dissimilar.” Libertymage writer Robin Grammer succinctly points out.
“Not only does our justice system make available verdicts and vote counts the same day that the court votes on the issue, they also make public the dissenting parties with the articulated minority opinion. This is a a world of difference from the transparency policy of the Federal Reserve, who graciously offers us meeting transcripts five years after the meetings occur. The transparency policies of these two groups are in no way similar and making such a comparison is disingenuous at best.” he concludes.
Furthermore, as Ron Paul himself explained during the Financial Services Committee hearings last week, the bill would do nothing to further politicize the Fed’s decision making given that the Fed is already overtly politicized anyway.
“Just the fact that they can issue a lot of loans and special privileges to banks and corporations, that’s political. This idea that it would be political because we know what happened afterwards just doesn’t seem to add up.” Paul beseeched.
The bill would not give anyone in Congress or elsewhere the authority to sit in on Fed hearings, thus it would have no impact monetary policy. All it would do is provide answers to the American people as to where their hard earned money is being spent.
The Federal Transparency Act would also expose the fact that it is the Federal Reserve that is responsible for the artificial inflation of the debt bubble and the issuing of credit out of thin air, the driving force behind the financial crises.
The Truth is that the Washington establishment knows that an audit would set the stage for a return of honest money and fiscal policies, in which the privately run Federal Reserve can play no role.
It comes as little surprise therefore to see the establishment media in Washington advocating a continuation of unaccountability and blanket secrecy.
Greg Boyd: Washing Osama's Feet and The Worst Heresy Imaginable
CIVICS NEWS Comment: I highly recommend Boyd's book, The Myth of a Christian Nation. He is one of the primary Christian pastors/theologians leading the way in calling Christians out of systems of power and into the Kingdom of God. Below is an article he wrote a couple years ago about the following image, followed by his follow-up article that he wrote after the reaction from the first. Enjoy.
Washing Osama's Feet
Greg Boyd - October 28, 2007
Brad Cole is a friend of mine who runs a ministry called Heavenly Sanctuary. This ministry puts on Conferences around the country on the Character of God — and they get it right. This year they hired an artist named Lars Justinen from the Justinen Creative Group to paint the above picture to use on posters advertising their conference. Under this picture they had captions like “Follow the Leader,” “God IS Great,” and most accurately, “Jesus - Still Too Radical?”
Heavenly Sanctuary had contracts with several malls in the Seattle area to hang these posters advertising their conference, but no sooner had the posters gone up than angry calls began flooding the malls. Many people — but, it seems, mostly Christians — were offended at the image of Jesus washing Osama Bin Laden’s feet. There was such an outcry that each of the malls decided to go back on their contract and take the posters down. The Christian College that Heavenly Sanctuary was renting space from to host the Conference also canceled their contract. Brad had to scramble to find a secular venue (which, ironically, had no problems with the poster).
What does this say about how many American Christians envision Jesus? Obviously, the protesters believe that Jesus would not wash Osama Bin Laden’s feet. But Jesus died “not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world” (I Jn 2:2) — and this obviously includes Osama. So if Jesus died for Osama, how are we to imagine him being unwilling to wash his feet?
What the protest reveals is that many Christians have tragically allowed their patriotism to co-opt their faith. They have allowed their American citizenship to take priority over their Kingdom citizenship — despite the New Testament’s instruction for disciples to consider themselves “foreigners” and “exiles” wherever they happen to live (Heb. 11:13; I Pet 1:17, 2:11) and to consider their real citizenship “in heaven” (Phil 3:20). Many American Christians seem to want a Jesus who will defend their country and hate their national enemies as much as they do. Many want the Jesus of the Middle Ages whom Crusaders called on to help them slaughter — not serve — their Islamic enemies. Many seem to want to reduce Jesus to just another version of the tribal gods that have been called on for centuries to bless tribal battles. Most wars throughout history have been fought under the banner of some god or another.
Fortunately, the real Jesus isn’t anything like this. Knowing all power had been given to him, John says, he wrapped a towel around his waist and washed the dirty, smelly feet of people he knew would deny and betray him in a couple hours (Jn 13:3-5). Knowing he could call legions of angels to vanquish his foes, the real Jesus rather chose to let them crucify him, because this is what they needed him to do (though they of course didn’t know it). Then, with his last breath, the real Jesus prays to his Father to forgive his barbaric torturers — and all of us (Lk 23:34).
This is the kind of power the omnipotent God of the universe uses against his enemies. And this is the kind of power we’re to use against our “enemies.” It’s the power of Calvary-like love.
We’re called to imitate the Jesus who washes the feet of enemies, dies for them, and prays for their forgiveness. We are to “live in love, as Christ loved us and gave his life for us…” (Eph. 5:1-2). When we were enemies, Jesus nevertheless ascribed unsurpassable worth to us by paying an unsurpassable price for us. We who claim we are his disciples are called to do the same. We’re to sacrificially ascribe unsurpassable worth to all people, including our enemies — even Osama Bin Laden.
In light of God’s servant love toward us, we must be willing to wash Osama’s feet — and pray for his forgiveness.
Jesus says to us:
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt…” (Lk 6:27-29)
And in case we missed the point, he comes back five verses later and says:
“…love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. (How important is this? Read this next sentence carefully). Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Lk 6: 27-29; 35-36).
When we act like our kind Father, we reflect the fact that we are his children.
In Christ, God’s been kind to Osama. May we who are his children do the same. May we be encouraged by the above picture rather than offended by it. May we pray, “Father, forgive Osama. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Worst Heresy Imaginable
Greg Boyd - November 6, 2007
Wow, I've gotten a ton of feedback on the picture in my previous blog. (I still have forty or so e-mails to get through!) Almost all of the responses (so far) have been positive! I thank God for the folks at Heavenly Sanctuary for coming up with this fantastically edgy picture. I believe it is going to be used in powerful ways for the Kingdom in the future
I'd like you to consider something.
The New Testament defines agape love by pointing us to Jesus Christ (I Jn 3:16). To love someone is treat them like Jesus has treated you -- dying for you while you were yet a sinner.
The New Testament tells us that the command to love (= looking like Jesus Christ) is the greatest command, encompassing all others ( Lk 10:27; Rom. 13:8, 10; Ja 2:8). It tells us everything else in the law hangs on our fulfilling this law (Mt 22:27-40). It tells us that love is to be placed above all else (Col 3:14; I Pet 4:8). It tells us that everything we do is to be done in love (I Cor. 16:14). It tells us that nothing has any Kingdom value apart from love, however impressive things may be in and of themselves (I Cor. 13:1-3). It tells us that the only thing that ultimately matters is faith energized by love (Gal. 5:6). And it tells us that this love is to be given to all people at all times, including our enemies (Lk 6:27-35) . Indeed, Jesus makes loving our enemies the pre-condition for being considered "children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked" (Lk 6:35). We're to "be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful" (Lk 6:36).
This is simply what it means to look like Jesus Christ.
Now follow me: If love is to be placed above all else, if everything else is to be considered worthless apart from love and if everything hangs on fulfilling this one law, how can we avoid the conclusion that refusing to love even our enemies is the worst heresy imaginable? To miss this all important point renders whatever other truth we may possess worthless.
In this light, we have to ask, who is the worse heretic: Michael Servetus who was burned alive for denying that the Son of God was eternal, or Calvin who had him burned alive? Burning someone alive is not loving them, doing good to them or blessing them (Lk 6:27-28, 35). And without love, whatever other truth Calvin may have been defending becomes worthless. If we're thinking biblically, how can we avoid concluding that Calvin was not only a worse heretic than Servetus, but that he committed the greatest heresy imaginable?
But I don't mean to pick on Calvin. Throughout church history from the time of Augustine (who first justified persecution in Jesus' name), millions of people were tortured and murdered for their alleged heresy. Yet, if we're thinking biblically, how can we avoid the conclusion that the Church that carried out this barbarism in Jesus' name was far more heretical than all the heretics it persecuted?
Ironically, while millions were tortured and murdered for having "heretical" views on things like baptism and communion, there's not one episode I know of throughout church history of anyone so much as having their hand slapped because they lacked love.
Yet, everything hangs on this.
Finally, while we have an obligation to distinguish between what is and is not the Kingdom of God, we have to carefully guard against self-righteousness. Rather than feeling righteous by contrasting ourselves with Calvin or any other Christian persecutors from the past, we have to ask ourselves: Are we guilty of the worst heresy imaginable? Do we do everything in love? Do we place love above all other considerations?
Do we love Osama Bin Laden?
Think about it.
Live in love, as Christ loved you and gave his life for you (Eph 5:1-2).
Greg
7/27/09
Has the people's Congress become ceremonial?
Congressman admits there is no point to being a Congressman…
LRC Blog - David Kramer - July 27, 2009 02:27 PM
…well, sort of:
Conyers Sees No Point in Members Reading 1,000-Page Health Care Bill–Unless They Have 2 Lawyers to Interpret It for Them
During his speech at a National Press Club luncheon, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.), questioned the point of lawmakers reading the health care bill.
“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.
“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”
Sausages, anyone?
Ron Paul in Grand Rapids
CIVICS NEWS Comment: On a personal note, the picture of Ron Paul below was taken in Ontario, California in April of 2008, Ron Paul's first public appearance during his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. He was talking to none other than yours truly (the handsome ear and cheek on the right of the photo) during this picture. I was telling him how much I appreciated his speech, Neo-Conned, which taught me a lot about what happened to the Republican Party in recent years. This image was subsequently used on the Ron Paul campaign literature. That was my 15 minutes of fame, I guess. Too bad I missed him while he was in Grand Rapids, which is where I live.
Ron Paul comments on Federal Reserve while in Grand Rapids
WZZM 13 - Amy Cox - July 27, 2009 
GRAND RAPIDS (WZZM) - Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke took part in a town hall style forum Sunday in Kansas City, Missouri.
Bernanke defended the fed's actions in bailing out financial institutions. He said he had to "hold his nose" over some of last fall's bailouts. But he didn't want to be the fed chairman when the second great depression occurred. The town hall will air on PBS this week.
Texas Congressman and former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. He visited West Michigan over the weekend and spoke exclusively with WZZM 13 News. Paul says his candidacy brought out the energy of people who want stricter government economic policies.
"They're very interested in limiting government... and actually, believe it or not, young people are interested in what the Federal Reserve is doing. That fascinates me to no end."
Ron Paul says the federal government is doing exactly the wrong thing to fix the economic downturn by spending more. However, he says the American people individually are doing the right thing by taking another look at their budgets and living within their means.
U.S. paid Israel to use Jewish kids as radioactive lab rats
I guess what was good for the Nazis…, Part 3
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - David Kramer - July 26, 2009 07:02 PM
As this sad saga continues, here’s a bit of modern Israeli history that I don’t recall being taught about when I was attending Hebrew School in the 1960s:
Israel’s Channel Ten television screened a documentary film which exposes the ugliest secret of Israel’s Labor party founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi youths of a generation. “The Ringworm Children“…directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias…won the prize for “best documentary” at the Haifa International film festival…The subject is the mass irradiation of hundreds of thousands of young Israeli immigrants from Middle Eastern countries — Sephardim, as they are called today.
They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.
To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on “school trips” and their parents were later told the x-rays were a treatment for the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children died shortly after their doses were given, while many of the rest developed cancers that killed thousands over time and are still killing them now. While living, the victims suffered from disorders such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer’s disease, chronic headaches and psychosis.
You can view the complete documentary on Youtube.
-----------------------------
CIVICS NEWS Comment: Also see HERE for more on this massive crime against humanity. Still think that the U.S. government and the state of Israel have a special covenant relationship with God?
7/26/09
Lackawanna Six did not get due process
The Raw Story article posted previously missed this little tid-bit about the "Lackawanna Six." Why did they plead guilty to providing support for terrorists? Notice the federal prosecutor totally admits it. From History Commons:
Charged with supporting al-Qaeda in September 2002, all of the “Lackawanna Six” originally pled not guilty (see September 13, 2002). But by May 19, 2003, all of them change their minds and plead guilty. They accept prison terms of 6 and a half to 9 years. The Washington Post reports that the fear of being declared “enemy combatants” led “the Lackawanna Six” to engage in plea bargain talks. The six men all plead guilty of providing support to a terrorist organization and received prison sentences of six-and-a-half to nine years. “We had to worry about the defendants being whisked out of the courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well for us,” says Patrick J. Brown, attorney for one of the six. “So we just ran up the white flag and folded.” [Washington Post, 7/29/2003] “Basically, what was related to us,” says James Harrington, attorney for another, “was that if the case was not resolved by a plea, the government was going to consider any options that it had. They didn’t say they were going to do it [declare them ‘enemy combatants’], they just were going to consider it.” [Guardian, 12/3/2003] This is corroborated by the US federal attorney responsible for the prosecution of the six, Michael Battle. He says his office never explicitly threatened invoking the enemy combatant status, because he did not have to. Everybody knew this threat was in the air. “I don’t mean to sound cavalier,” he says, “but the war on terror has tilted the whole [legal] landscape. We are trying to use the full arsenal of our powers. I’m not saying the ends justify the means,” he adds. “But you have to remember that we’re
protecting the rights of those who are being targeted by terror as well as the rights of the accused.” [Washington Post, 7/29/2003] Neal R. Sonnett, speaking as the chairman of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants, says: “The defendants believed that if they didn’t plead guilty, they’d end up in a black hole forever. There’s little difference between beating someone over the head and making a threat like that.” [Washington Post, 7/29/2003] Nothing illustrates the US government’s new power over suspects… better than the case of the Lackawanna Six,” Guardian journalist James Meek observes. [Guardian, 12/3/2003]
We barely avoided martial law under the Cheney regime
Cheney pressed Bush to test Constitutional limits by using military force on US soil
Muriel Kane - Raw Story - Saturday, July 25, 2009
According to a story in Friday’s New York Times, Vice-President Cheney advocated in 2002 for the Bush administration to send military troops to Buffalo to arrest the so-called Lackawanna Six as enemy combatants.
This would have violated both Fourth Amendment guarantees against search and seizure without probable cause and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it illegal to use the military for law enforcement.
Despite those prohibitions, Cheney argued that the president did have the power to use the military on US soil, citing an October 23, 2001 Justice Department memorandum co-authored by John Yoo which claimed that presidential power extended to the domestic use of the military as long as it served a national security purpose.
The Lackawanna Six were a group of young Yememi-Americans who had attended an al Qaeda training camp in 2001. They were arrested in September 2002, and President Bush bragged of having broken their “cell” in his January 2003 State of the Union address.
However, an investigation by Salon failed to turn up any evidence that they were actually a “sleeper cell” or that they had been planning any kind of violent attack. Most of them were convicted merely of providing material aid to terrorists.
According to Salon, all six were very ordinary young men who had been led to believe they were traveling to Afghanistan for religious studies. The evidence against them was tenuous — which was one reason Cheney pressed for them to be held as enemy combatants instead of being arrested — and many of their Muslim neighbors told Salon they believed the entire case against them was a scam.
The October 2001 Yoo memorandum was declassified last March, but the accounts given to the Times by anonymous Bush administration officials are the first indication that there was serious consideration of actually using it.
Cheney’s legal advisor David Addington and some Defense Department officials supported Cheney’s position, but several aides to President Bush opposed it, along with then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and FBI Director Robert Mueller. President Bush ultimately turned the plan down and ordered the FBI to make the arrests.
The full registration-restricted Times story can be read here.
"God's Politics" on minimum wage laws
CIVICS NEWS Comment: I would add to Bill's comments that the God's Politics blog is calling for the use of violence to force employers to pay workers more than the market rate for their labor. Aren't these the good liberals who speak out against war and violence and preach Jesus' ideals of non-violence? Why do they suspend their principles when dealing with economics? They must promote violence in order to maintain their leftist ideology. Let's put Christ before ideology.
God Celebrates Unemployment!!
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - Bill Anderson - July 25, 2009
Well, not exactly, but on the “God’s Politics” blog, they are claiming that “people of faith” can “celebrate” the raising of the minimum wage. According to the People Who Claim to Speak for God, the free market “exploits” workers:
First implemented during the Great Depression, the minimum wage sought both to protect workers and to improve the economy by enhancing consumer purchasing power. Some argue that the market should naturally determine wages based on supply and demand, yet we have seen how an unchecked market has led to exploitation of workers and an even greater disparity of wealth that is dangerous for the economy as a whole. A minimum wage treats workers with dignity and keeps our economy on a healthy, sustainable base.Of course, even this newly-mandated amount is not enough. No, God is demanding even higher wages:
As the gap between the rich and the poor grows to a dangerous level in the U.S., we must encourage better pay for those struggling to survive at the bottom of this gap. A leading minimum wage advocacy organization, Let Justice Roll, is asking people of faith to advocate for a wage increase to $10 an hour by 2010. Click here to learn more about the “10 by 10” campaign and to urge your legislators to bring the minimum wage closer to meeting workers’ daily needs.What they don’t tell us is that the minimum wage is another way of saying that anyone who is willing to work for less than what the government mandates should not be permitted to work at all. The role that the minimum wage has played in destroying employment opportunities for black teenagers and other groups who are on the margins is well-documented.
This is an example of Bastiat’s “Broken Window Fallacy” in which people claim that destruction of property and employment actually is a “blessing” to the community. The idea that it magically increases the overall purchasing power for the economy is an example of the Fallacy of Composition, which is part and parcel to the pro-minimum wage argument. Of course, the people at Sojourners simply baptize leftist doctrines and then claim they are from God. I never have forgotten that Jim Wallis and others at Sojourners enthusiastically endorsed the Mao regime at the height of the Cultural Revolution. In sheer numbers, Mao was the greatest mass-murderer in history, and Wallis stood behind the killings.
Debate on the Fed
Check out the video on C-SPAN. Starring Tom Woods. Who do you think won the debate...should we abolish the Fed?
7/24/09
Oliver Stone: Military-Intelligence Complex killed JFK
JFK and the Unspeakable
Oliver Stone - Huffington Post - Friday, July 24, 2009
The murder of President Kennedy was a seminal event for me and for millions of Americans. It changed the course of history. It was a crushing blow to our country and to millions of people around the world. It put an abrupt end to a period of a misunderstood idealism, akin to the spirit of 1989 when the Soviet bloc to began to thaw and 2008, when our new American President was fairly elected.
Today, more than 45 years later, profound doubts persist about how President Kennedy was killed and why. My film JFK was a metaphor for all those doubts, suspicions and unanswered questions. Now an extraordinary new book offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance. That book is James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. It is a book that deserves the attention of all Americans; it is one of those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the power to change it.
The subtitle sums up Douglass's purpose: Why He Died and Why it Matters. In his beautifully written and exhaustively researched treatment, Douglass lays out the "motive" for Kennedy's assassination. Simply, he traces a process of steady conversion by Kennedy from his origins as a traditional Cold Warrior to his determination to pull the world back from the edge of destruction.Many of these steps are well known, such as Kennedy's disillusionment with the CIA after the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and his refusal to follow the reckless recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. (This in itself was truly JFK's shining moment in the sun. It is likely that any other president from LBJ on would have followed the path to a general nuclear war.) Then there was the Test Ban Treaty and JFK's remarkable American University Speech where he spoke with empathy and compassion about the Soviet people, recognizing our common humanity, the fact that we all "inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."
But many of his steps remain unfamiliar: Kennedy's back-channel dialogue with Khrushchev and their shared pursuit of common ground; his secret opening to dialogue with Fidel Castro (ongoing the very week of his assassination); and his determination to pull out of Vietnam after his probable re-election in 1964.
All of these steps caused him to be regarded as a virtual traitor by elements of the military-intelligence community. These were the forces that planned and carried out his assassination. Kennedy himself said, in 1962, after he read Seven Days in May, which is about a military coup in the United States, that if he had another Bay of Pigs, the same thing could happen to him. Well, he did have another "Bay of Pigs"; he had several. And I think Kennedy prophesied his own death with those words.
Why does it matter? The death of JFK remains a critical turning point in our history. Those who caused his death were targeting not just a man but a vision -- a vision of peace. There is no calculating the consequences of his death for this country and for the world. Those consequences endure. To a large extent, the fate of our country and the future of the planet continue to be controlled by the shadowy forces of what Douglass calls "the Unspeakable." Only by unmasking these forces and confronting the truth about our history can we restore the promise of democracy and lay claim to Kennedy's vision of peace.
But don't take my word for it. Read this extraordinary book and reach your own conclusions.
We need more vaccines!
Via Prison Planet, 12,000 U.S. Children To Be Swine Flu Vaccine Guinea Pigs:
Around 12,000 U.S. children will be used as guinea pigs for an experimental swine flu vaccine known to contain the dangerous ingredient squalene, which has been directly linked with cases of Gulf War Syndrome and a host of other debilitating diseases.
According to a report in the Oklahoman, 12,000 children nationwide will partake in
“fast-tracked studies” to test the side-effects of the untested swine flu vaccine in trials set to begin next month.“The trials will test the vaccine’s effectiveness and whether or not it has negative side effects in patients,” states the report.
Obama Puts Monsanto Lobbyist In Charge Of Food Safety
Obama Puts Monsanto Lobbyist In Charge Of Food Safety
Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq. - Organic Consumers Association - Friday, July 24, 2009
Genetically modified foods are not safe. The only reason they’re in our food supply is because government bureaucrats with ties to industry suppressed or manipulated scientific research and deprived consumers of the information they need to make informed choices about whether or not to eat genetically modified foods.
Now, the Obama Administration is putting two notorious biotech bullies in charge of food safety! Former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor has been appointed as a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety. And, rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff is rumored to be President Obama’s choice for Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety. Wolfe spearheaded anti-consumer legislation in Pennsylvania that would have taken away the rights of consumers to know whether their milk and dairy products were contaminated with Monsanto’s (now Eli Lilly’s) genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). [...]
Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq. - Organic Consumers Association - Friday, July 24, 2009
Genetically modified foods are not safe. The only reason they’re in our food supply is because government bureaucrats with ties to industry suppressed or manipulated scientific research and deprived consumers of the information they need to make informed choices about whether or not to eat genetically modified foods.
Now, the Obama Administration is putting two notorious biotech bullies in charge of food safety! Former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor has been appointed as a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety. And, rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff is rumored to be President Obama’s choice for Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety. Wolfe spearheaded anti-consumer legislation in Pennsylvania that would have taken away the rights of consumers to know whether their milk and dairy products were contaminated with Monsanto’s (now Eli Lilly’s) genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). [...]
7/23/09
Obama popularity falling
His approval ratings are lower than Bush's were at this time of his presidency. Sorry government, with the internet, the truth can't be stopped. People aren't going to buy the same lies, murders and thefts.
Your cable guy is a government spy
Via Prison Planet.com, Cable TV Workers Trained To Spy On Citizens
Watson comments,
Bright House Networks employees will watch for “suspicious behavior,” which according to law enforcement and DHS guidelines includes being politically active, displaying bumper stickers, or disagreeing with the government. [...]
“Operation Bright Eyes is designed to maximize the eyes and ears of Bright House Networks field service representatives and other employees to easily identify suspicious behavior and to quickly report criminal activities to police,” according to a Fox 35 report.
Watson comments,
Since when was it the job of the cable guy to run around pretending to be an undercover cop? This program is ripe for abuse and another advancement in the tattle-tale stasi society being created in order to make the sheeple self-police their behavior, constantly aware that they are being watched by secret police and living in fear that big brother will catch any minor indiscretion.
The legacy of training Americans to spy on each other in the name of “safety” has its origins in Operation TIPS, which was supposedly nixed by Congress, a DOJ, FBI, DHS and FEMA coordinated program that would have recruited one in twenty-four Americans as domestic informants, a higher percentage than was used by the Stasi in Communist East Germany.Government funding was cut after an outcry but private funding continues and the same program was introduced under a number of sub-divisions including AmeriCorps, SecureCorps and the Highway Watch program.
More recently, ABC News reported that “The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort…..to aid with criminal investigations.”
In July last year we reported on how hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
Also last year, a New York Times feature article heartily celebrated the fact that an increasing number of Americans are becoming informants and turning in their neighbors and family members to the authorities in return for cash rewards. In a piece about a new program run by Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers, citing gas prices, foreclosure rates and runaway food price inflation, The Times lauds the fact that citizens are reporting on each other, ensuring “a substantial increase in Crime Stopper-related arrests and recovered property, as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren or former boyfriends in exchange for a little cash.” [...]
As we have previously documented, people displaying suspicious behavior as defined by law enforcement authorities in documents such as the MAIC report, along with Homeland Security lexicon files, include Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag.
Homeland Security even equates people who express disagreement with the government with domestic extremists and terrorists. So if the cable guy sees an Alex Jones DVD in your TV cabinet, will that mandate a call to the cops?
There seems little need for President Obama to even create his promised “domestic security force,” and such a move would merely represent a centralization of what is already underway, since a plethora od programs that train Americans to report on each other are already firmly in place across the country.
Ex-detainee: Gitmo abuse contines under Obama
Ex-detainee: Gitmo abuse continues
Daniel Tencer - Raw Story - Thursday, July 23, 2009
A former Guantanamo detainee whose landmark lawsuit against the Bush administration forced the US to change its controversial rules for trying detainees says that abuse of prisoners continues at the facility.
In an article published by Germany’s Der Spiegel and reprinted by ABC News, Lakhdar Boumediene, who spent seven-and-a-half years at Guantanamo Bay before his release, says that, despite President Obama’s order upon taking office to end torture, beatings of prisoners continue to be widespread.
“According to Boumediene, a special guard unit continues to beat prisoners to get them out of their cells, and any official claims that such treatment has stopped are untrue,” the article states.
Boumediene was a Red Cross worker in Bosnia in October, 2001, when he was picked up by authorities on suspicion of links to an Algerian terrorist group. When a Bosnian court threw out the charges against him for lack of evidence, he was taken by the US military to Guantanamo.
Boumediene says he was tortured for information for 16 days upon his arrival at Gitmo. [...]
Daniel Tencer - Raw Story - Thursday, July 23, 2009
A former Guantanamo detainee whose landmark lawsuit against the Bush administration forced the US to change its controversial rules for trying detainees says that abuse of prisoners continues at the facility.
In an article published by Germany’s Der Spiegel and reprinted by ABC News, Lakhdar Boumediene, who spent seven-and-a-half years at Guantanamo Bay before his release, says that, despite President Obama’s order upon taking office to end torture, beatings of prisoners continue to be widespread.
“According to Boumediene, a special guard unit continues to beat prisoners to get them out of their cells, and any official claims that such treatment has stopped are untrue,” the article states.
Boumediene was a Red Cross worker in Bosnia in October, 2001, when he was picked up by authorities on suspicion of links to an Algerian terrorist group. When a Bosnian court threw out the charges against him for lack of evidence, he was taken by the US military to Guantanamo.
Boumediene says he was tortured for information for 16 days upon his arrival at Gitmo. [...]
The Rockefellers, Nazi Eugenics, and Abortion
Jay Rockefeller Can’t Deny His Connection to Modern Eugenics
Kurt Nimmo - Infowars - July 22, 2009
Near the end of the video here shot by WeAreChange activists, the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller can only offer a telling smile when asked about the eugenics history of his family. “Go find somebody else to talk to,” snaps the West Virginia senator when politely asked to elaborate.
As briefly documented in the short video, the Rockefeller family essentially created the modern eugenics movement from scratch. As John B. Sharpless of the University of Wisconsin documented in 1993 after examining the files of the Rockefeller Foundation, the records of the Population Council, and the personal papers of John D. Rockefeller III, Rockefeller spawned foundations are responsible for a “nearly unanimous change in attitudes and ideas about population that occurred during the 1960s.” In addition to the Rockefeller Foundation and the Population Council, other foundations active in eugenics include the Ford Foundation, the Milbank Memorial Fund, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Conservation Foundation.
The Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island in 1904 that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. “From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation’s social service agencies and associations,” Edwin Black wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003.
In the United States, key eugenic organizations funded by the Rockefeller, Harriman and Carnegie families included the American Eugenics Society, and its sister organization, the American Society of Human Genetics established in 1947, the above mentioned Cold Springs Harbor Experimental Station for the Study of Evolution, the Eugenic Record Office, and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
It should be noted that J.D. Rockefeller and Averell Harriman were business partners of Prescott Bush in Brown Brothers Harriman. In addition to funding and promoting eugenics, they supported and funded the Nazi rise to power.
Jay Rockefeller’s family is responsible for the racist eugenics policies that led to the mass extermination of millions
The Rockefellers funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany, ultimately responsible for Hitler’s mass extermination policy. In addition to supporting Alexis Carrel, who advocated the use of poison gas to get rid of useless eaters, the Rockefellers funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz where he became medical commandant and experimented on concentration camp inmates. These gruesome medical experiments included needles used to change eye color, work on infections and blood transfusions, the removal of limbs without anesthetics, sex changes, sterilization, and other unspeakable crimes. Countless people were murdered and their organs, eyeballs, heads, and limbs sent to the Rockefeller group at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
The Rockefellers’ chief executive for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was the fascist Swiss psychiatrist Ernst Rudin. Rudin and his staff, as part of the Task Force of Heredity Experts chaired by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, crafted Germany’s sterilization law. Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute and a Nobel Prize winner publicly applauded Hitler for advocating the mass murder of mental patients and prisoners.
Rockefeller and his bankster cronies were up to their eyes in eugenics and mass extermination. “Under the Nazis, the German chemical company I.G. Farben and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey were effectively a single firm, merged in hundreds of cartel arrangements. I.G. Farben was led, up until 1937, by the Warburg family, Rockefeller’s partner in banking and in the design of Nazi German eugenics,” writes Anton Chaitkin. Standard-Germany president Emil Helfferich testified after the war that Standard Oil funds helped pay for SS guards at Auschwitz, the notorious mass extermination and slave labor camp.
After the war, the Rockefeller eugenics movement experienced a facelift to distance itself from the discredited Nazis. In the 1950s, the Rockefellers reorganized the U.S. eugenics movement and added population-control and abortion groups. The Eugenics Society changed its name to the Society for the Study of Social Biology — a mere two months after Roe was handed down. “The name was changed because it became evident that changes of a eugenic nature would be made for reasons other than eugenics, and that tying a eugenic label on them would more often hinder than help their adoption. Birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances of our time. If they had been advanced for eugenic reasons it would have retarded or stopped their acceptance,” commented Frederick Osborn, who oversaw the workings of the organization at the time.
As documented by Rebecca Messall and others, Roe v. Wade “relies directly and indirectly on the work of members of the British and American eugenic societies and of eugenics-related groups and initiatives.” Abortion has nothing to do with “choice” or empowering women — it is about controlling the masses and culling the herd.
In his excellent study of the Rockefellers, Gary Allen explains that the “Rockefeller game plan is to use population, energy, food, and financial controls as a method of people control which will lead, steadily and deliberately, into the Great Merger,” a one-world government and global fascism. “Understand that … enforced infertility is not planned for India or Senegal, but for the United States, where zero population growth is already a fact.
But we are being led to believe that unless we give Big Brother total power over people’s rights to have children, we will all be ankle deep in human beings within a decade. Such august organizations as the National Academy of Sciences are helping to hawk this Rockefeller line… Curbing population growth is just part of the Rockefeller war on the American family. Abortion is another.
Jay Rockefeller may deny knowledge of his family’s intimate connections to eugenics and abortion — and direct involvement in Hitler’s genocidal rampage across Europe — but the record is out there for all to see. It is easily researched on the internet.
And maybe that is why Jay Rockefeller mused during a Senate committee hearing a few months ago that we’d all be better off if the internet never existed. Minus the internet and search engines, it will be far easier to lead the masses to near extinction if they go ignorantly blissful like lambs to the slaughter with little more resistance than a bleat.
Drastically slashing world population and reducing the remainder into obedient slaves is the final act of the global elite. Jay Rockefeller knows it and that’s what his knowing smile was all about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
