American Exceptionalism and American Torture

In 1964, the Brazilian military, in a US-designed coup, overthrew a liberal (not more to the left than that) government and proceeded to rule with an iron fist for the next 21 years. In 1979 the military regime passed an amnesty law blocking the prosecution of its members for torture and other crimes. The amnesty still holds.

That’s how they handle such matters in what used to be called The Third World. In the First World, however, they have no need for such legal niceties. In the United States, military torturers and their political godfathers are granted amnesty automatically, simply for being American, solely for belonging to the “Good Guys Club”.

So now, with the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, we have further depressing revelations about US foreign policy. But do Americans and the world need yet another reminder that the United States is a leading practitioner of torture? Yes. The message can not be broadcast too often because the indoctrination of the American people and Americophiles all around the world is so deeply embedded that it takes repeated shocks to the system to dislodge it. No one does brainwashing like the good ol’ Yankee inventors of advertising and public relations. And there is always a new generation just coming of age with stars (and stripes) in their eyes.

The public also has to be reminded yet again that – contrary to what most of the media and Mr. Obama would have us all believe – the president has never actually banned torture per se, despite saying recently that he had “unequivocally banned torture” after taking office.

Shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new Director of the CIA, explicitly stated that “rendition” was not being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time: “Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.”

The English translation of “cooperate” is “torture”. Rendition is simply outsourcing torture. There was no other reason to take prisoners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, amongst other torture centers employed by the United States. Kosovo and Diego Garcia – both of which house large and very secretive American military bases – if not some of the other locations, may well still be open for torture business, as is the Guantánamo Base in Cuba.

Moreover, the key Executive Order referred to, number 13491, issued January 22, 2009, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, leaves a major loophole. It states repeatedly that humane treatment, including the absence of torture, is applicable only to prisoners detained in an “armed conflict”. Thus, torture by Americans outside an environment of “armed conflict” is not explicitly prohibited. But what about torture within an environment of “counter-terrorism”?

The Executive Order required the CIA to use only the interrogation methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual. However, using the Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner treatment and interrogation still allows solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental manipulation such as temperature and noise, and stress positions, amongst other charming examples of American Exceptionalism.

After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York Times wrote that he had “left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu that President Obama authorized under new rules … Mr. Panetta also said the agency would continue the Bush administration practice of ‘rendition’ … But he said the agency would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions ‘that violate our human values’.”

The last sentence is of course childishly absurd. The countries chosen to receive rendition prisoners were chosen precisely and solely because they were willing and able to torture them.

Four months after Obama and Panetta took office, the New York Times could report that renditions had reached new heights.

The present news reports indicate that Washington’s obsession with torture stems from 9/11, to prevent a repetition. The president speaks of “the fearful excesses of the post-9/11 era”. There’s something to that idea, but not a great deal. Torture in America is actually as old as the country. What government has been intimately involved with that horror more than the United States? Teaching it, supplying the manuals, supplying the equipment, creation of international torture centers, kidnaping people to these places, solitary confinement, forced feeding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Chicago … Lord forgive us!

In 2011, Brazil instituted a National Truth Commission to officially investigate the crimes of the military government, which came to an end in 1985. But Mr. Obama has in fact rejected calls for a truth commission concerning CIA torture. On June 17 of this year, however, when Vice President Joseph Biden was in Brazil, he gave the Truth Commission 43 State Department cables and reports concerning the Brazilian military regime, including one entitled “Widespread Arrests and Psychophysical Interrogation of Suspected Subversives.”

Thus it is that once again the United States of America will not be subjected to any accountability for having broken US laws, international laws, and the fundamental laws of human decency. Obama can expect the same kindness from his successor as he has extended to George W.

“One of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.” – Barack Obama, written statement issued moments after the Senate report was made public.

And if that pile of hypocrisy is not big enough or smelly enough, try adding to it Bidens’ remark re his visit to Brazil: “I hope that in taking steps to come to grips with our past we can find a way to focus on the immense promise of the future.”

If the torturers of the Bush and Obama administrations are not held accountable in the United States they must be pursued internationally under the principles of universal jurisdiction.

In 1984, an historic step was taken by the United Nations with the drafting of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (came into force in 1987, ratified by the United States in 1994). Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back. If today it’s deemed acceptable to torture the person who supposedly has the vital “ticking-bomb” information needed to save lives, tomorrow it will be acceptable to torture him to learn the identities of his alleged co-conspirators. Would we allow slavery to resume for just a short while to serve some “national emergency” or some other “higher purpose”?

If you open the window of torture, even just a crack, the cold air of the Dark Ages will fill the whole room.

Cuba … at long, long last … maybe …

Hopefully, it’s what it appears to be. Cuba will now be treated by the United States as a country worthy of at least as much respect as Washington offers to its highly oppressive, murdering, torturing allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

It’s a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis, and even more abroad, but Cuba needs to do it. Maybe the Cubans can civilize the Americans a bit.

Let’s hope that America’s terrible economic embargo against the island will go the way of the dinosaurs, and Cuba will be able to demonstrate more than ever what a rational, democratic, socialist society can create. But they must not open the economy for the Yankee blood-suckers to play with as they have all over the world.

And I’ll be able to go to Cuba not as a thief in the night covering my tracks and risking a huge fine.

But with the Republicans taking over Congress next month, all of this may be just a pipe dream.

Barack Obama could have done this six years ago when he took office; or five years ago when American Alan Gross was first arrested and imprisoned in Cuba. It would have been even easier back then, with Obama’s popularity at its height and Congress not as captured by the Know-Nothings as now.

So, Cuba outlasted all the punishment, all the lies, all the insults, all the deprivations, all the murderous sabotage, all the assassination attempts against Fidel, all the policies to isolate the country. But for many years now, it’s the United States that has been isolated in the Western Hemisphere.

Reason Number 13,336 why capitalism will be the death of us.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria – the “superbugs” – if left unchecked, could result in 10 million deaths a year by 2050. New drugs to fight the superbugs are desperately needed. But a panel advising President Obama warned in September that “there isn’t a sufficiently robust pipeline of new drugs to replace the ones rendered ineffective by antibiotic resistance.”

The problem, it appears, is that “Antibiotics generally provide low returns on investment, so they are not a highly attractive area for research and development.”

Aha! “Low returns on investment”! What could be simpler to understand? Is it not a concept worth killing and dying for? Just as millions of Americans died in the 20th century so corporations could optimize profits by not protecting the public from tobacco, lead, and asbestos.

Corporations are programmed to optimize profits without regard for the society in which they operate, in much the same way that cancer cells are programmed to proliferate without regard for the health of their host.

Happy New Year. Here’s what you have to look forward to in 2015.

• January 25: 467 people reported missing from a university in Mexico. US State Department blames Russia.
• February 1: Military junta overthrows President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Washington decries the loss of democracy.
• February 2: US recognizes the new Venezuelan military junta, offers it 50 jet fighters and tanks.
• February 3: Revolution breaks out in Venezuela endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines land in Caracas to quell the uprising.
• February 16: White police officer in Chicago fatally shoots a 6-year old black boy holding a toy gun.
• March 6: Congress passes a new law which states that to become president of the United States a person must have the surname Bush or Clinton.
• April 30: The Department of Homeland Security announces plan to record the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States.
• May 19: The Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets.
• May 27: The Transportation Security Administration declares that all airline passengers must strip completely nude at check-in and remain thus until arriving at their destination.
• June 6: White police officer in Oklahoma City tasers a 7-month-old black child, claiming the child was holding a gun; the gun turns out to be a rattle.
• July 19: Two subway trains collide in Manhattan. The United States demands that Moscow explain why there was a Russian citizen in each of the trains.
• September 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republican Party so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check.
• September 12: White police officer in Alabama shoots black newborn, confusing the umbilical cord for a noose.
• November 16: President Obama announces that Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba all possess weapons of mass destruction; have close ties to the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and the Taliban; are aiding pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine; were involved in 9-11; played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor; are an imminent threat to the United States and all that is decent and holy; and are all “really bad guys”, who even (choke, gasp) use torture!
• November 21: The United States invades Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.
• December 10: Barack Obama is awarded his second Nobel Peace Prize
• December 11: To celebrate his new peace prize, Obama sends out drones to assassinate wrong-thinking individuals in Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen.
• December 13: Members of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi parties, which hold several high positions in the US-supported government, goose-step through the center of Kiev in full German Storm Trooper uniforms, carrying giant swastika flags, shouting “Heil Hitler”, and singing the Horst Wessel song. Not a word of this appears in any American mainstream media.
• December 15: US Secretary of State warns Russia to stop meddling in Ukraine, accusing Moscow of wanting to re-create the Soviet Union.
• December 16: White police officer shoots a black 98-year-old man sitting in a wheel chair, claiming the man pointed a rifle at him. The rifle turns out to be a cane.
• December 28: The Washington Redskins football team finish their season in last place. The White House blames Vladimir Putin.

Notes

1. Associated Press, December 11, 2014
2. New York Times, December 11, 2014
3. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009
4. New York Times, February 6, 2009
5. New York Times, May 24, 2009
6. Washington Post, December 11, 2014
7. National Security Archive’s Brazil Documentation Project
8. Washington Post, December 10, 2014
9. See note 7
10. Washington Post, December 13, 2014

Mystery, Fear, And Confusion

The Product of The American Government…

I have vowed not to watch programs on TV Channels that select the majority of their participants from two particular racial minorities. C-Span has been guilty of that distortion and I have purposely neglected it as a result.  However, I like Brian Lamb’s interviews when he is not stuck with the anointed races.  Recently he interviewed James Risen http://www.c-span.org/video/?322401-1/qa-james-risen , a New York Times writer and the author of a couple of investigative books that have gotten him indicted by our tyrannical government.

It is difficult to comprehend how in about two centuries the United States of America has evolved from a new nation whose leaders advised that it not become involved with foreign intrigues to a nation that seeks to dominate the entire world.

There were clues.  Even in its infancy it was avaricious.  Expansion seemed to be in its blood.  It captured the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and garnered the Far Eastern island of the Philippines, Cuba in the Caribbean, and Alaska to our North.  It imposed its will on South American nations and fought several wars including one with our Southern neighbor, Mexico.  It even tried to annex Canada.

Following the devious imposition of the Federal Reserve System it flowered into international leadership.  Wars became a means for gaining control over other nations and no longer had anything to do with the nation’s welfare.  From that time on a mysterious power seemed to have hand on the rudder of the America ship.  The League of Nations, founded after WWI, was unable to gain widespread support but following WWII the United Nations, a second similar organization, emerged and has been working behind the scenes to gain control over various entities within nations around the world.

Suddenly, after the mysterious 9/11 event, United States separated itself from the United Nations and became the leader of an operation called the “War on Terror”.  The War on Terror did not specify an enemy; the dictionary defines terror as a “state of intense fear”.  From that definition it appears that the United States has embarked on a mission to eliminate fear by bombing, invading, and tyrannizing a series of Middle Eastern nations most of which are Muslim and enemies of neo-Israel.

While we fight the endless war on terror Muslims have been encouraged to immigrate into Western nation in both Europe and America.  Allowing the so-called enemy to infiltrate the adversary’s borders is a seeming contradiction in intent and has caused serious conflicts.

Near the end of the interview with Brian Lamb, Risen tells Lamb that the purpose of the War on Terror is mysterious and that many things are hard to understand.  He says it is difficult to determine what is real and what is fiction.  Lamb made no comment and did not pursue the subject.

Risen recounted a story about Senator Ron Wyden who for several months spoke of some injurious action that would upset the American people but he could not say what it was.  Only after Edward Snowden’s NSA revelation did the Senator admit that this was the thing he had not mentioned.  Risen used this to illustrate the lack of oversight that surrounds our intelligence agencies and the war in general.

If James Risen with his extensive investigation cannot understand the war on terror it is not wonder that United States citizens neither understand it nor pay much attention it.  Life goes on as if continuous war is normal. Trillions of dollars of debt accumulate to the account of American citizens and neither congress nor the people, nor the press mounts a substantial challenge.

This mysterious war on terror has caused the structure of a police state to rise over freedom.  Most of the laws enacted to protect the people from the government have been abolished and the structure that has been erected can be activated at will.

Risen has challenged a tiny part of the monster.  He seeks freedom of the press as indispensable for the maintenance of a free nation.  He is not challenging the entire series of questionable events that have brought us to this point nor the pervasive press control that has saturated all of our news outlets. The destruction of the World Trade Centers has never been properly investigated.  The evidence available defies the government’s story but our timid elected officials fail to provide a challenge. The mysterious power that seems to control us has frightened everyone and the highly visible, small, though brave, challenge Risen has mounted is a drop in the bucket.

As airplanes fly over our cities and create long slender clouds citizens ignore them.  The mention of this startling operation brings a hush to the conversation.  People know that a mysterious force is operating and are afraid of it.  In previous times a shocking appearance of this kind would have brought a crowd to government offices demanding to know what was going on.  Today, like frogs in the boiling pot we are accepting more and more serious infractions without protest.

The Bush family has been pawns in the quest for world tyranny for several generations.  In the coming national election Jeb Bush, the former Governor of Florida, is positioning himself to be the Republican nominee.  The American people will not be given a choice.  Jeb Bush affixed his signature to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century  This organization bears substantial responsibility for the war on terror.  It signers and crafters were stained with the philosophies of Leon Trotsky.

As a presidential election looms the press and media begin to give the pre-selected candidates free publicity.  Widely hated former President George W. Bush wrote a book and is now seen on TV doing light and jolly sessions with former President William J. Clinton.  Though Jeb Bush is not shown the publicity is designed to create a favorable impression of the candidate in the minds of the public.  It is effective.  One need only look to the inappropriate candidacy of President Barak Obama to understand the ability of the press and media to manipulate the electorate.

Any candidate for President of the United States that sincerely means to act in the best interests of the people of the United States will be purposely marginalized by the press and media.  Both Congressman Dr. Ron Paul and Patrick Buchanan had to fight a negative press.  Though these candidates had a sizeable following their platform was never given serious coverage.  They were lucky to be allowed to join the presidential debates and when they did they were marginalized and were made to look foolish.

The next President of the United States of America will continue the policies set in place by President George W. Bush and President Barak Obama.  Massive debt will continue to accumulate, perpetual war will continue, moral deterioration will progress, the presidency will increase in power, and freedom will continue to deteriorate.  It is in the best interests of the world power seekers to maintain peace but that does not mean the riots will not continue.  Trotskyites in the press and media view riots as an opportunity to consolidate power.

We have forgotten the Creator, the Triune Christian God who was the power behind the founding of our nation.  We have forsaken the humility of the creature and usurped the station of the Creator, a position we are ill equipped to occupy.  We are created beings, unable to govern ourselves; the confusion of cognitive dissonance is a result.   Peace tarries until we begin to allow the Master to assume His role of King and Ruler.

When Liberal Preferences Meet Islamic Principles

There was a recent scandal that, as much as anything else, illustrates the intellectual emptiness and moral ennui of the modern liberal man. It occurred in Britain but reflects a wider phenomenon; what can be said about it can be said about happenings in Sweden, France, Holland, Canada or Belgium — or the United States.

It was discovered recently that Muslims in seven London schools were indoctrinating children with Islamic propaganda, ignoring Western culture and refusing to inculcate the “British values” of the moment. The situation was such that all of one school’s library books were in Arabic and many students couldn’t tell investigators whether they should follow British or Sharia law or which was more important. And one of these schools, mind you, was a state-run Church of England institution — that happens to now be upwards of 80 percent Muslim.

When hearing about the subordination of British law to Sharia and other such Islamic cultural inroads, one of my instincts is to say “So what?” Cry me a river of multiculturalist tears.

Multiculturalism, we’ve been told, dictates that all cultures are morally equal and deserve the same respect and footing within “Western” civilization. Never mind that the ideology is self-defeating. After all, since different cultures espouse different values, not all cultures can be “morally” equal unless all values are so. This makes multiculturalism not only a corollary of, but also a Trojan horse for, moral relativism. And consider the implications. If all values are equal, how can showing cultures equal respect be superior to cultural chauvinism? And what if another culture does prescribe the latter? It then follows that the people within it cannot both have their own culture, unaltered, and accept multiculturalism.

Nonetheless, since multiculturalism is considered enlightened by Western pseudo-intellectuals, it’s time for some personal petard hoisting. A Daily Mail piece on the Londonistan school situation tells us that some students told inspectors “it would be wrong to learn about other religions” and that “it was a woman’s job to cook and clean.” The paper furthermore reported that schools were criticized for “failure to give girls equal opportunities,” narrow curricula, not preparing students “for life in a diverse British society,” not encouraging students “to respect other people’s opinions” and for creating a situation in which students’ “understanding of the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance, is underdeveloped.”

And the problem is…?

What if these Muslims’ faith and culture dictate that women should be steered toward domesticity and shouldn’t have equal opportunity; that there should be not diversity but Islamic homogeneity; that not all opinions should be respected and that it is wrong to learn about other religions; and that Islamic theocracy is preferable to democracy? And the matter of “tolerance” is an interesting one. Since the term implies a perceived negative — you wouldn’t tolerate a delectable meal or fine car, but would have to tolerate a stubborn cold or bad weather — the reality is that tolerance is only admirable under two circumstances:

• When something you dislike isn’t objectively bad, such as when you tolerate a vegetable you’re not partial to for health reasons.
• When you’re powerless to change something that is objectively bad, such as an irremediable crippling condition.

But if something is objectively wrong and can be eliminated, it is an abdication of moral responsibility to refuse to do so. And has it occurred to anyone that pious Muslims may instinctively realize this and, considering Western culture a misbegotten force (their perspective), view changing it a divine mission?

Be that as it may, given that multiculturalism espouses cultural equivalence and its correlative moral relativism, by its lights none of the bemoaned Islamic curricula standards and outcomes can be any worse than what secularists prefer. So what gives? Are you liberals denying these Muslim immigrants their culture and creed?

You certainly are. But this hypocrisy is nothing new. Multiculturalism has been used for decades, at every turn, as a pretext for denuding Western traditions and Christian symbols and messages from our cultural landscape, using “tolerance” and “diversity” as rallying cries. Even as I write this, a Washington state high-school senior faces expulsion from school for sharing his Christian faith, the idea being that such expression is “offensive.” Multiculturalism was always nonsense. “Anything goes” — as long as it’s branded “culture” — could never be a recipe for organizing anything because it doesn’t allow for distinguishing between anything and any other thing. A standard of some kind must be applied when devising laws, regulations and social codes; and standards, by definition, involve the upholding and imposition of values.

This is why G.K. Chesterton once noted, “In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.” Except for leftists possessed of evil genius, most are in the latter camp. Multiculturalism certainly felt right when useful for purging an element of tradition contrary to the liberal agenda; it doesn’t quite have the same glitter, however, when it would allow the institution of such an element. Multiculturalism is for use on other people’s dogmas; it’s not for use on the Left’s own.

Now, one pitfall of being a slave to one’s age who unknowingly embraces its dogmas is that you generally make the mistake of mirroring. This is when you project your priorities, feelings and basic suppositions onto others; in a nutshell, you assume that they take for granted the things you do.

Consider, for instance, Muslims’ subordination of host-country law to Sharia law. Outrageous? Impudent? Perhaps.

Shocking?

In reality, you should expect nothing less — or more.

When pondering this, realize that devout Christians (of which I’m one) are very similar to Muslims in this regard. This statement may raise eyebrows and even some dander, but just consider the recent cases in which Christians have accepted career destruction and punishment rather than be party to same-sex “weddings” or homosexual activism. Why are these Christians opposing the “law of the land”? And what standard informs them man’s law is wrong? What standard are they subordinating the law of the land to?

What they see as the only law that could be, and must be, above it: God’s law.

This isn’t to say Christians and Muslims are the same. They certainly have different conceptions of God’s law. And in keeping with this, Christian law generally didn’t clash with Western “secular” law — until secularists started holding sway — because our secular law reflected Christian morality; it was authored by Christian men, such as the Founding Fathers, who naturally imbued their system of law with their world view. As an example, the Declaration of Independence enunciates the basis for our constitutional rights, stating that men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

The situation with Sharia is far different. Since the tree of Western secular law wasn’t germinated from the seed of Islam, it was traditionally and remains today largely incongruent with Muslim principles; thus is a clash, in which Islam will ever try to burn that tree root and branch, inevitable.

Some moderns will now say that this is why no “religious” law should influence society. But not only is this a philosophically unsound position that fails to recognize the basis of just law (Absolute Truth), it also places a person in bad company: The Marxists and Nazis also aimed to neuter the Church and squelch belief in religious law. After all, a devout statist wants the state’s law to be pre-eminent; “Thou shalt have no gods before thy government.” And this won’t happen if people recognize a higher law.

And this recognition is what believing Christians, Muslims and Jews all have in common. It is also why it is silly, in the extreme, to expect Muslims to subordinate Sharia to Western secular law. You are literally asking them to place government ahead of what they see as God. This simply isn’t going to happen, and no amount of blather about “tolerance,” “diversity” and multiculturalism — which is just another way of saying “Accept our liberal dogmas” — is going to change that. And when the population of believing Muslims becomes great enough in a Western land, they will succeed in Islamizing governmental law.

German chancellor Angela Merkel announced in 2010, finally, that multiculturalism in her country had “utterly failed.” Talk about being a biblical day late and a budget deficit short. And she and other Western leaders still don’t get it. One can’t understand ideologies such as multiculturalism if he views them as disconnected social mistakes; they are all part of a deep philosophical/spiritual malaise. It isn’t just that the multiculturalist branch needs to be pruned or even cut off. It’s that the devout Muslims are right: the liberal-secularist tree, that Gramscian mutation, must be pulled up and incinerated in the Hell fires whence it came. And it will be. The only question is whether we will return to our roots or allow the complete erasure of Western civilization.

The New Slavery

You Are The Slave…

Recently I received a book about the history of Islam.  It is written in inviting prose and covers in detail the saga that unfolded through history from the time of the birth of Ishmael and Isaac.  On the cover is the bust of a soldier armed with a rifle on a background tinted in blood red.  The Tile of the book is “The Blood of the Moon” written by Dr. George Grant and published in 1991.  It is a great read.  I recommend it.

Grant contends that Islam is a religion that cannot be stamped out by the sole use of military force.  Nevertheless he seems to support both Israel and the United States military.  The book provides a clarion call for resistance to an Islamic plan to use brutalities to bring the world under their control.

I have just finished reading through several of R. J. Rushdoony’s books for the second time. .  His writing platform has King Jesus enthroned and active in the affairs of the world. Rushdoony provides superb explanations of the implications of a thorough, literal interpretation of Scripture.  He maintains that righteous government requires righteous citizens.

Good books written by capable thinkers invariably avoid the obvious existence of conspiracies.  We have progressed from the empires of Rome and France where large portions of the world fell under tyranny to quests for new world orders that hope to extend hegemony over the entire earth.  Like the airplanes that spray chemicals in our skies the public and most good commentators ignore reality, preferring instead to live in the comfortable but dangerous world of fantasy.

Chalcedon Foundation has published another collection of Dr. Rushdoony’s musings entitled “Our Threatened Freedom”.  It is a collection of radio spots recorded in the early 1980s.  As with all of Reverend Rushdoony’s commentaries they are incisive and pertinent. They cement the necessity of freedom in creating a prosperous society and pinpoint the insanity of allowing humanism to gain control.  Over and over again Rushdoony documents the irrational chaos created by overzealous humanistic government. The book produces extensive evidence that the checks and balances incorporated into our Constitution are not working.

Unfortunately, Rushdoony does not entertain the premise that irrational chaos is being purposely created throughout the world because chaotic societies are easier to dominate. There is no mention of the yearly Bilderberg meetings (See Here) where the wealthy and powerful meet to discuss and implement their collective agenda.  There is no mention of Zionism, which is a conspiracy, or the International bankers who control currencies, a power which is tantamount to control of the food supply.  David Rockefeller’s long time promotion of world government now confirmed in his book “Memoirs” is not cited.

There is an element of irony in the fact that theologically sound Christian teaching maintains that the Triune God created the world and even in these rebellious and barbaric times is in firm control of current events.  This fact allays the fears and striving of those that oppose the power seekers.  God controls the world and will always do so in spite of the evil efforts of those He created.

Coincidentally, Presidential candidates are often invited to the Bilderberg meetings prior to running for office.

Princeton’s Martin Gilens and Northwestern’s Benjamin I. Page have published a study that concludes “–ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests.”  Read here and here.

Conspiracies are ignored because “conspiracy theorists” are widely considered a bit whacky. The word “conspiracy” has been demonized to prevent the expression of truth.

The plotters have made great progress in the past several decades World government wonks have become leaders in most Western nations and as the United States military does the bidding of the Zionists, hegemonic progress is occurring in the Muslim world.

Influential neocon Max Boot lobbies for perpetual war seeking the destruction of all enemies of Israel using the United States military.  It has been going on for a long time.  Boot is supported by scores of wealthy, influential neocons in powerful positions throughout the nation; he also has the media and a horde of wild eyed Evangelical Christians that make his current position almost impregnable. We are a giant puppet being controlled by a midget puppeteer creating an anomaly that is regularly ignored by prominent American authors.  Read here and here

Jacob Hornberger (Future of Freedom Foundation) describes the current condition of our nation:  “Is the situation here at home bad? We both know it is. Invasions, occupations, torture, indefinite detention, embargoes, sanctions, foreign aid, empire, militarized police, drug raids, asset forfeiture, infringements on civil liberties, IRS, income taxation, Federal Reserve, fiat money, welfare, minimum-wage laws, and economic regulations. The welfare-warfare state is destroying our freedom, morality, prosperity, and independence. We need to smash this immoral and destructive apparatus out of existence!”

Hornberger is on target with his description and the need to “smash this immoral and destructive apparatus out of existence”.  However, he fails to identify exactly how it is to be smashed!

There are some cracks beginning to appear in one conspiracy that could bode for future confrontation.  Publisher, Editor and writer, Tal Brooke, has used his SPC (Spiritual Counterfeits Project) Journal to bring some light to our current dilemma.  In the latest issue 38.1 and 38.2 he has authored an incisive piece entitled “The Messiah of a Divided People”.  In a paragraph describing the ancient Elders of the Sanhedrin he describes their dissatisfaction with a Messiah “who went like a lamb to the slaughter” preferring one that would defeat the Romans, install Zion as the world ruler and appoint them as rulers of the world

He writes, “This was, and remains, their aim and expectation. They would be the world’s five star generals and judges, Jerusalem would be the center of the World Court.  And they could tell Caesar to roll over like a dog.  They could walk into the city of Rome and take anything they wanted.  They could occupy the palace, they could execute judgment on the multitudes of the treacherous.  The world would finally be theirs as they believed Isaiah had promised them. And these Elders would rule the entire earth from Zion.  This remains the goal.”   (Emphasis mine.)  .  (For copies of the SPC Journal call )

The same issue of the SPC Journal contains articles by Jewish Christian writers Steven Wohlberg and Steven Sizer.  Confrontation is not about hatred but about justice, peace, truth and righteousness for all people.

Talmudic Zionists realize at least two goal by supporting perpetual war:  They destroy the United States of America, a supposedly Christian nation (a religion they overtly hate), and at the same time contribute to the safety and power of neo-Israel.  Christianity seeks to bring the Creation under the dominion of the Triune God by peaceful means; Talmudic Zionists by stealth; and Islam by siege.

What will happen when these various power structures conflict?  Will the bankers dominate; the Zionists, the international Bilderbergers, Islam, or the business tycoons?  Will the Christian Triune God allow His world to be controlled by evil forces as punishment to rebellious Christians?  Or will Christians repent and allow the sword of the Spirit to Challenge the enemies of Christ?  Time will tell.

Wake up America.  It is not our elected officials who are setting policy for our nation.  Instead, it is the money barons, the Zionists, the Bilderbergers, and the international business tycoons.  That is at least a partial reason why elected officials do not keep their pre-electoral promises.  Obedience to the enabling masters is mandatory and retribution for disobedience is severe – note the fate of Presidents Reagan and Kennedy.

President Nixon set the stage for China to decimate the U. S. economy; President Carter gave away the Panama Canal; the Patriot Act was written long before 9/11, and Obamacare was constructed before his election.  The agenda is set in place before the presidents are elected and the people are expected to blame the puppet president rather than the invisible power centers that are actually setting policy.  The system is working.

It is time for American voters to understand that the candidates for President of the United States are pre-selected and only those obedient candidates are allowed to gain the office.  Voting is a sham to placate the populace.

Overt slavery has been eradicated in most of the Western World but the often denied sinfulness of men has put the entire world under a threat of becoming a massive slave plantation.

Murder Mystery: Who Really Runs The American Government?

This week I am going down to Long Beach, CA, in order to attend the world-renowned BoucherCon, a fabulous annual convention for mystery book writers and readers.  You just gotta love BoucherCon.

At last year’s convention in Albany, NY, I scored 50 free books — but still haven’t finished reading them yet.  However, it’s always reassuring to know that I’ll probably never run out of murder-mystery books to read ever again — especially since I’m about to score yet another 50 free books at this Long Beach convention.

But the biggest mystery of all these days seems to be “Who, exactly, is actually running the American government?”  Well, here’s a big clue:  “It ain’t you or me.”  The fact that we ourselves definitely do not run America was clearly demonstrated once again in this last election cycle — when a huge majority of Americans either voted against their own best self-interests or didn’t even vote at all.

Apparently we Americans can just barely manage to keep the kids dressed, the dog washed, the bathroom stocked with toilet paper, the mortgage paid, the 401K alive and our own lives up and running — let alone keep a democracy alive and well.  It’s definitely not like 1776 around here right now.

But not to worry.  I myself have already solved the mystery of who actually does run America while most Americans are all busy doing something else.

According to political analyst Peter Dale Scott, America is actually run by a select group of people that he calls the “American Deep State”.  And these guys are really bad-ass.  They even have their own internet system — and probably even their own FaceBook apps too.  And of course they also have their own bunkers, billionaire supporters, lobbyists and election fixers as well — and Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House all take orders from them.  That’s totally scary!  Makes those “October Surprise” Ebola and ISIS scares look like a walk in the park. 

So.  Why do I think that Peter Dale Scott is right?  There just has to be a shadow government here in America — because what else could possibly explain why America continuously and consistently acts so strongly against its own best interests? 

“But Jane,” you might ask, “just exactly who are these underworld shadowy cartoonish characters that you’ve just described — and exactly what are they up to?”  Well, from all my recent sleuthing around, I’ve discovered that this uber-shadow government, whoever it is composed of, obviously has a soft spot in its heart for starting wars, ruining economies, and disrupting countries, regions and even whole continents whenever they possibly can.  No American in his or her right mind would ever want to do that.

“But, Jane,” you might ask next, “how can you actually prove all this?  Sounds rather paranoid and conspiracy-theory-ish to me.”  Hey, I’m on this like Sherlock Holmes!

But even though I can’t exactly sneak into these guys’ bunkers or onto their yachts or secretly listen in on their phone conversations, I can still easily see all the footprints these hoodlums have left behind in the snow.  “Means, motive and opportunity,” as Holmes would say.  Just get out your magnifying glass and look at these clues:

Footprint # 1:  China and Korea.  Before we even knew what hit us after WWII, suddenly China had been torn up in rebellion against our corrupt man in Peking, Chaing Kai Shek.  And then the whole Korean peninsula blew up.  Was the loss of China and the destruction of Korea in the average American’s best interests?  Totally not.  So who had the motive, means and opportunity here?  You tell me.

Footprint # 2:  Vietnam.  The whole result of that “war” was to destabilize all of Southeast Asia.  Okay.  You got China, Korea and Southeast Asia destabilized now.  And did it benefit the average American to have Asia so broken and hateful against us?  It did not.  But who did it benefit?

Footprint # 3:  Mexico, Central America and South America.  Do Americans really benefit from having death squads and drug lords on the rampage down there?  What do you think?  I think not.  All we got out of this deal was a whole bunch of undocumented refugees coming up here in search of their lost treasures.  But then who does benefit?  Those shadowy guys behind the curtain who sell arms and own banks?  Yeah.

Footprint # 4:  Yugoslavia.  The American Deep State picked at Yugoslavia and picked at Yugoslavia until it too finally fell apart.  Balkanization.  How could that have possibly been good for America?  It wasn’t.  But who did benefit from its fall?  Wall Street and War Street.  Of course.

Footprint # 5:  The Middle East.  What a freaking mess!  And who made this mess?  It wasn’t the American people.  We had no dog in this fight.  But the American Deep State both did then and does now.  Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel?  Means, motive and opportunity to make a real mess.  And, yes, Israel is a hot mess too.

Footprint # 6:  Africa.  Africa has been fried, poached and eaten whole by the American Deep State too.  From apartheid South Africa and the bloody attacks on democratic Angola to the Ebola and HIV disasters, blood diamonds, IMF loans with never-ending interest payments and rape in the Congo, Africa is now a hot mess.  And who exactly benefited from this scramble for Africa?  Not you and me — or our children or our dogs either.

Footprint # 7:  Ukraine:  You have no idea what a broken egg Ukraine has become recently as neo-Nazis kill innocent civilians right and left.  Their theme song seems to be, “Party like it’s Serbia in 1995!”  Plus a German company, Telefunken Racoms, is actually selling these Ukrainian neo-Nazis their weapons.  “Party like it’s Leningrad in 1942!” 

But have any of us average Americans actually benefited from all this world-wide chaos?  No, no, no and no.  So who did?  The American Deep State.

Footprint # 8:  America.  That’s us.  It should come as no surprise to anyone even semi-conscious right now that our economy has tanked, we’re at each others’ throats and Corporations are now People.  The propaganda machine that the Deep State now runs here would make Hitler proud!  Or happily match up with George Orwell’s prescient observation that “War is Peace.”  And this is all part of a plan to make Americans as dazed and confused as, say, Africans and the folks in the Middle East are now.  But who the freak benefits from all this?  Definitely not us. 

So then your next question should be, “How can we stop this, put an end to the American Deep State and return to being a democracy?”  How can you even try to stop a shadow?  It’s hard.  But we could start by regulating Wall Street, limiting weapons manufacturers’ profits, making sure that our election laws never let anyone anywhere for any reason contribute more than $200 to any election campaign, having fact-checkers sort out all those blatant lies in campaign broadcasts, and fiercely guarding against election violations.  Oh, and also get rid of all those Deep State bunkers, yachts and private internet rat-lines that we American taxpayers are paying for now.

Or perhaps we could just run a PowerBall lottery for every available position in Congress, on the Supreme Court and in the White House.  Surely any random lottery winner would do a better job of resisting the American Deep State than those sorry wimps that we now have kissing the DS’s booties and being their gollums.

But however we go about it, we have just got to stop the American Deep State from murdering our democracy — before it’s too late and the American dream’s corpse arrives DOA at the morgue.

PS:  See you at BoucherCon!  It would be a mystery to me why anyone would not want to attend that.

Obama Lame Duck In A NeoCon Congress

You just have to love the wit and precision of a political image. Pat Dollard’s title NY Post Destroys Obama With Brutal Cover, says it all. The arrogant despot was indeed STRIPPED! The belated question is why did it take so long? In order to answer the obvious, most political analysts’ will fall into the partisan trap of party politics. Hope and change finally was seen as dictatorial haughtiness. Most voters do not believe that they are deceived by skilled liars when they cast their ballot. Yet, that is a pattern that is uninterrupted in most elections. Only the style of administrations differs, while the establishment continues to pull the strings and policies to move the consolidation of the New World Order forward.

That Nefarious Warrior Organism is eager to accelerate the next stage of the master plan.  Under an openly NeoCon front, John McCain’s chairmanship of a Senate Armed Services Committee will get to pressure the public into believing that their national security requires vigorous interventionism. Before you think that the Democrats differ from this same post WWII strategy, it would be best to brush up on a necessary history lesson.

Obama never attempted to confront, much less reverse the foreign policy of defending an empire. At the core of American power is the use of force that threatens any regime, which will not capitulate to the dictates of the financial elites that put Obama in office. The same can be said for most of the presidencies from FDR onward. The mere attempt to buck this system got JFK killed and Reagan shot. Yet to even mention such vial thoughts earns the historiographer a place in the conspiracy hall of infamy.

The abandonment of truth is a primary requirement to be part of the system. The reverse also applies. To be a successful player in the corridors of power, the skills of deception and prevarication must be demonstrated. Obama excelled in this task. However, his usefulness is now over.

For the indoctrinated clones that only see politics through a progressive lens, dealing with defeat seems inconceivable. Conversely, the novice supporters of Republican candidates vote with the erroneous belief that the country will now get back on track. Both crowds operate in a mindset that does not work in the real world.

Winning a GOP majority in the Senate removes the crook Harry Reid and his Mafioso tactics but the added seats in the House just gives Boehner flexibility to ignore Tea Party representatives. When you hear of an atmosphere of collaboration between Obama and the new anticipated Senate leader Mitch McConnell, you should shudder.

Democracy Now provides a correct assessment on Obama & McConnell Pledge Cooperation; Will Fast-Tracking Secretive TPP Trade Deal Top Their Agenda?

“We get analysis from Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, who notes that while some analysts say GOP gains will accelerate the passage of fast-track legislation in Congress to enable an agreement on the TPP, “it is kind of hard for the Republicans to voluntarily delegate more authority to the guy they’ve been attacking as the imperial president who grabs power that’s not his.” The controversial so-called free trade deal involves 12 countries and nearly 40 percent of the global economy. Trade ministers from the 12 countries negotiating the trade deal are due to meet in Beijing ahead of the Asia-Pacific economic summit next week to continue negotiations.”

Oh if only such logic would be applied to the deal making sell out process. Here is a central point to most political arrangements. Forget about compromises, the deal boils down to serving the interests of the shady figures behind the officials. Corporatist Republicans want to continue the globalism sellout just as much as the Democrat partisans, who take the same contributions from the financial elites.

No honest observers of the nuclear fallout from the Reid run Senate can conclude that passing legislation through the conference process with the House was ever considered. Will the new GOP Senate leadership return to the 60 vote filibuster tradition? This test will determine if any optimism would return.

In a on Facebook, the always provocative Karen De Coster asks: “Why the F$%K – Does a Congress with a 10% approval rating has a 90% Re-election rate?” Reelection Rates Over the Years provides added evidence of this tragedy.

Maybe the immediate query should be why the newly elected Republican Senators would vote for a known deal maker betrayer of principles like McConnell as their leader? For a more detailed analysis of Expectations after the 2014 Elections, the Radical Reactionary essay is worthy of a read.

THE MEGALOMANICALITY OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA cites the Obama the Insane comes out with this… Delusional behavior occurs next out of a mad man.

• EXCERPT:  “The American people sent a message,’ he claimed, ‘one that they’ve sent for several elections now. They expect the people they elect to work as hard as they do. They expect us to focus on their ambitions, and not ours.”
• EXCERPT: “Our economy is outpacing most of the world. But we’ve just gotta keep at it. Much of that will take action from Congress. And I’m eager to work with the next Congress.”
• EXCERPT:  “He said he would only work with Republicans if they seek to ‘make responsible changes’ to the law. I’m going to be very receptive to hearing those ideas. Despite all the contention,” Obama claimed, “we now know that the law works.”
• EXCERPT:  “Executive orders,” he said, “will be replaced and supplanted by a bill from Congress. You send me a bill that I can sign and those executive actions go away. But what I’m not gonna do is just wait.”

For some unsolicited advice for any honorable Democrats left in their party, consider the following. Jeffrey Steinberg of Executive Intelligence Review floated this option back in October 2010, Invoke the 25th Amendment To Remove Obama. Undoubtedly the situation has worsened dramatically since then. “LaRouche demanded the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which provides for the orderly removal of a President, and his replacement by the Vice President, due to physical or mental impairment.”

The actual 25^th amendment says:

Section 4.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Barack Hussein Obama thinks he is an emperor but is actually a dysfunctional psychopath. His dictates need to be ignored and his irrelevancy demands his replacement. Since the Congress does not have the courage to impeach this unhinged traitor, the Democratic careerists need to step up, (for no better reason) than to save their own skins.

Even a two year term under Joe “wacko” Biden would be preferable to an insane sociopath with his finger on the nuclear button.

Discard any pure or noble reasons for adopting such a removal process. Bank on sheer self-interest to blame all the failures on the best fall guy since Richard Nixon. The establishment needs a cover-up to distract the public from the coming economic collapse. When a liar commander in chief no longer is believable, his clothes are STRIPPED from the throne.

Republicans must feel maximum heat NOT to save Obama. Those cowardly chicken hawks will bomb anyone on the globe to maintain the empire, but will not lift a finger to remove a modern day Emperor Justin II. Praetorian Prefect warns of a bi-partisan malady. Now it is time to act and dispatch Obama to a disgraceful internment.

Bethel Church’s “Apostle” Bill Johnson: A Comedy of Errors, Part 2

Before I report on Apostle Bill’s endeavor to involve his followers in his “grave sucking,” undertaking, I must tell you a brief story that involves an angel, a gift, and slaying a dragon.

May 2005

Wednesday night at half past 11, I was in bed reading when a white lightning bolt struck the floor and out stepped a dazzling creature with wings the length of a 747.  “Do not fear!” he said when he saw the alarmed expression on my face. “I am the angel Archibald!”  My husband was sacked out next to me with a pillow over his head so he announced in a quiet voice, “I have come with a message from the Lord of hosts.”

A flood of feathers floated around the room so I covered my nose and mouth with both hands.  But it was too late.  “Ah-choo!”

“God bless you!” said the angel.

Now I was certain that he was the Lord’s messenger.  I tapped my husband on the back and whispered, “Wake up.”  Dead to the world.  A poke in the ribs and, “Honey…you gotta see this.”

A muffled voice groaned, “Whuuut?”

“We have a visitor.”

The pillow came off his head and he sat bolt upright in bed.  Seconds later he spotted Archibald hovering in the corner.  “Holy cow!” he exclaimed.

“Cow?” said the angel, seeming a bit cross.  “Hardly!”  His eyes shifted from my stunned husband and settled on me.  In a strong clear voice he stated matter-of-factly: “The Spirit of God has bestowed upon you a new gift.  Forthwith you will become a blogger.”

He eyed me quizzically, waiting for my response.  When none was forthcoming, he said firmly, “You are to use your new gift to expose ravenous wolves that have slipped into the sheep pen under the cover of darkness.  These wolves are teaching doctrines of demons…”

I didn’t have to ask what he meant by doctrines of demons.  He had to be alluding to Word of Faith…New Apostolic Reformation…Purpose Driven…Emergent…Social Justice…New Age…New Thought and other false teaching that had made its way into churches and seminaries while our shepherds snoozed.  “I’ve tried telling people about false teaching, I said to myself, “but what I say goes in one ear and out the other.”

I heard the angel say: “There are counterfeits who call themselves new apostles and prophets.  These men and women are giving Him (he glanced up at the ceiling) a bad name. Expose them as false teachers!”  His wings ceased fluttering and he became as still as a stone.  “Are you ready to serve the King?

“Are you kidding me?”  I exclaimed in disbelief.  “First of all, I’m not gifted to write – or at least I wasn’t, until now.”  I searched for excuses.  “And…and I got a B in English by the skin of my teeth—“

The angel cut me off sharply.  “Certainly you do not think this is news to Him (he glanced up at the ceiling).”

True.  God knows all things, including my grades in college.  Perhaps He wanted to get me out of my comfort zone.  Writing a blog would definitely accomplish that.   One last try: “But…um… I’m nobody!  No one will listen to a word I say.”

“Some will listen,” Archibald assured me.  “And others will fall for lies. It is always that way with humans.”

I turned to my husband and said, “Tell him no one will take me seriously.”

My husband came out of his stupor and said in a serious tone, “God uses nobodies all the time.  But there’s a catch.  You’ve got to be willing.”  He looked me straight in the eye. “Are you?”

Am I willing, I wondered?   I needed but a moment to ponder his question.  Yes, I guess I am, I said to myself.  I’m more than willing.  Suddenly I felt as if I could go out and slay a dragon.  “OK, I’ll do it!” I glanced over at my husband.  “The two of us can do it together.”

We high-fived and he said with a grin, “We make a good team.”

I gave Archibald a thumbs up.  “We’re in.”

Poof!  The angel disappeared, feathers and all.

—–

The next morning I found a large silver feather on the floor where Archibald had appeared to us.  He had left his calling card.

Bentley’s Angels

In I covered ’s rock-star evangelist Todd Bentley and the shame he brought on the Name of our Lord and how “Super Apostles” Bill Johnson and Rick Joyner restored him to ministry despite his obvious character flaws. There were exaggerated healings and dangerous “healing” practices that included assaulting the sick with leg drops, high kicks and head punches which he claimed the Lord told him to do to people who came to him for help.  Moreover, Bentley drank excessively, committed adultery and soon thereafter left his wife and children and married the . There’s a whole lot more to report on the fraud evangelist, but space does not allow.  So – why bring him up again?  Because he says him.  It’s not uncommon for people who are into “signs and wonders” strange manifestations, and other esoteric experiences to boast of angel visitations.  Two angels who supposedly come to Bentley are and the Winds of Change.  Winds is supposedly “a high-ranking angel over all the ones assigned to healing, breakthrough and revival unto harvest.”

To the best of my knowledge Todd Bentley has never met the Angel Archibald.  But I have.  Or have I?

Do you see the problem? I made up a story and so can you.  Anyone with a vivid imagination can make up a story about angel visitations, trips to heaven, and whatnot.   But there’s no way to validate all the wild claims people make.  Sadly, NAR leaders pitch their stories to gullible sheeple who want desperately to believe that their heroes would never lie to them. This might explain why “Super Apostle” Rick Joyner’s followers hang on his every word as he looks straight into a video camera and testifies that he’s been to heaven.  During one of his many visits he claims the Lord handed him the key to eternal joy.  Watch the he made and you’ll see that I’m not making this up.  In it Apostle Rick crows that he’s had a number of encounters with , and he knows many others who’ve had Elijah encounters too!  He’s quick to point out that it’s not necromancy (communicating with the dead) because Elijah was taken up to heaven without dying.  At 9:20 minutes you’ll learn how he met Enoch.

But this is not about Rick Joyner’s spiritual gift of pulling the wool over the sheep’s eyes.  So I’ll move on.

Grave Sucking

It’s hard to imagine anything more ludicrous than “grave sucking” yet Apostle Bill endorses this macabre practice.  Grave sucking aka “mantle grabbing” occurs when the Holy Spirit draws powers from the bones of a deceased person who, while alive, was allegedly Spirit empowered.  Since God’s mission for the dead is thwarted when he dies, the Spirit passes on his powers to individuals who visit their graves.

According to Victory Ministries, Apostle Bill led a group to John Lake’s grave where the following ensued:

He was looking for Lake’s anointing to heal the sick by a supernatural power. The people seeking this new paranormal anointing prostrated themselves upon Lake’s grave weeping, worshipping and expecting that Lake’s ministry power would strike them and his spirit would infuse them with a sign and wonders ministry like he had when he was alive.  Thus, a new preternatural cult was formed that day that is now referred to as “grave sucking.”

 Mr. Johnson testified about this bazaar act of desecration and necromancy (the practice of attempting to communicate with the spirits of the dead in order to predict or influence the future) that he and his group committed on Sid Roth’s radio show, “It’s Supernatural”

Johnson spun a weird mystical/Occult experience tale to Sid Roth about meeting the Late John Lake’s angel in the building where Lake had previously ministered in his healing rooms. He testified that two ladies went to a back room and they met a giant angel there that healed one of the women. They called Johnson and when he came into the room, he claimed there was an angel about 10 feet tall. Sid asked him, did you see the angel? Johnson replied “No, but I knew he was there and the angel said to me, ‘What took you so long, I’ve been here for 80 years!’” ()

It should surprise no one that Bill Johnson claims that he had a tête-à-tête with an angel.

What does the Bible say about playing around in the spirit realm?:

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.  ()

Bethel School Of Sorcery

Apostle Bill runs the  in Redding CA.  According to its website:

(BSSM) is committed to the truth that God loves people, gave Himself for them and has given His Church supernatural power to bring individuals and nations into wholeness. The mission of BSSM is to equip and deploy revivalists who passionately pursue world-wide transformation in their God-given spheres of influence. Students are trained to continue in the ministry style of Jesus: to enjoy the presence of God, say what He is saying, and do what He is doing. (emphasis added)

Basically, BSSM trains people to heal the sick and raise the dead.  This raises the question: why do these folks not bring dead people back to life in America, Canada and western European countries?  Why only in the developing countries?  If the dearly departed are coming out of their graves in the developed countries, the media would surely report on it.

Insanity

The describes one man’s experience at Bethel Church (BC):

After a strange experience with an erratic Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry student who baby-sat his children, Bart McCurdy of Cottonwood decided to find out for himself what was going on at Bethel.

McCurdy said he attended a Friday night service at the church, during which he saw people painting on stage, dancing and flailing around on the ground. He found their worship music unconventional when one line of the same song was played for at least 11 minutes, he said.

McCurdy said the repetitive music, dancing, painting and excessive stimuli serve to get people worked up into an emotional frenzy where they’re expecting to see miraculous things.

“They come looking for that feel-good feeling, that high, for supposed miracles, supposed signs and wonders, speaking in tongues, gold dust, diamonds, feathers[floating down from the ceiling]. … It seems like they’re just ready for it,” he said.

Once, as she ran through her house frantically searching for her journals, the baby sitter told McCurdy the anti-Christ was in her house and Jesus was in hell saving people, he said. Shortly after that, she went into a trancelike state and said she felt 20 feet tall before losing consciousness…. The behavior made him believe she was demon-possessed, he said.

McCurdy said he regularly downloads podcasts of Bethel messages and hasn’t heard the Christian gospel message taught at Bethel. …

Then what gospel does Apostle Bill preach if not the taught in the Bible?  He teaches the (WoF) that saves no one.  What is the true gospel message?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ()

See also

Despite the fact that Apostle Bill teaches a false gospel he’s hugely popular with many professing Christians.  His book sales are in the millions.  He’s become so popular that a large number of churches around the globe are affiliated with BC.  This speaks volumes as to the current state of evangelicalism.  Sadly, a growing number of believers have zero discernment, thus they accept every “wind of doctrine.”  Translation: Every sort of false teaching that blows their way.

A Challenge

Christians have been warned that , as some call it, represents a danger to millions of people around the globe, especially to (low information evangelicals) and the unsaved.  Because of self-professed apostles and prophets such as C. Peter Wagner, Rick Joyner (mentioned in part ), Bill Johnson and a , we’ve seen an unbridled abuse of the Holy Spirit.  After reading this series, I challenge you to do your own research (links below).  Before starting, pray that God will reveal truth to you.  What you’ll discover is that teaching isn’t remotely close to historic orthodox Christianity — and it certainly isn’t the Christianity for which the martyrs shed their blood!  Flee from it!

Part 1

Resources:

—Phil Johnson interviews John MacArthur

–By John Lanagan

1. –Around 54:00 minutes into the session, Wagner responds during the Q&A. He tells the audience that when the Holy Spirit stopped revealing things through the written Word, He kept on revealing new things to us through the “Rhema Word.” He claims that the Holy Spirit still speaks to us today by giving us information that you cannot find in the 66 books of the Bible; info that the Bible doesn’t address, but it’s not contradictory.

—Tony Miano, host of Cross Encounters radio, discusses, among other things, the music of BC’s music team Jesus Culture (more below). Listen to Tony tell of his Twitter chat with Beni Johnson, Bill’s pastorette wife.

…scroll down—Apologetics Index

—On Solid Rock resources

–On Solid Rock Resources

Bethel Church’s Music & Entertainment:

—Ken Silva

—Amy Spreeman

Watch And Weep:

—My Word Like Fire

Helpful Scripture:

,

,

,

The Enemy Within

Sabotage…

It was several decades ago when I began to understand that there were powerful forces loose in the world bent on destroying the United States of America.  It happened when our markets were thrown open to foreign goods and our domestic industry was forced into a contrived world market.

I was working for a company that provided fabricated steel products to American manufacturers.  When our markets were opened the U. S. companies that supplied our raw material began to shut down their operations being unable to compete with foreign manufactures.  It was at this point that I began to wonder why powerful forces in our nation would intentionally harm their fellow citizens.

The process of using unreasonable competition to export manufacturing and technical knowhow has continued. Knowledgeable writers and film makers have written and produced many films and articles documenting the results of this malignant intent. During the 1930s a popular radio show called “The Shadow”,  involved an invisible person that could enter the room, hear all that was being said but never be seen.  Our nation is being controlled by a Shadow Government.

In reviewing Tom Engelhardt’s new book “Shadow Government” Philip Giraldi writes “Shadow government operates invisibly and is accountable to no one —,.”  From his review it appears that Engelhardt has confirmed the existence of a shadow government and enumerated many of it policies and machinations but failed to identify it.  Read the review here. http://www.unz.com/article/skewering-the-shadow-government/

When lists of the wealthiest families in the world are compiled the name of Rothschild is always missing.  The Rothschild wealth is shadow wealth.  Their dominant presence in world financial circles is usually hidden.

Recently, I ran across an article by Lew Rockwell www.lewrockwell.com  about an attack on his Website by the Neocons.  If the Neocons have the power Rockwell describes (I believe they do.) they are surely a major force in the Shadow government of the United States of America.  The article is entitled “The Neocons Hate Our Guts”

It begins with these words::

“The most despicable group of political gangsters in America want to destroy this site, and everything it stands for. Who are they? The neoconservatives.”

“Originating in Trotskyism, through their cells in New York City in the 1930s, this bunch now controls much of the American right, on which they have fastened their ideology of constant war, the police state, the welfare state, militarism, and Soviet-like thought control. The Trots sought, and seek, world power for themselves, through bloody world revolution. Trotsky even sought to have the state determine who could marry and who could have children, long before Hitler, to create a new, subservient man.”

“If you read their own books, they are open about their devotion to the “noble lie,” an idea they got from Plato. It is a virtue, they claim, to lie to the people, so that the right characters stay in power, under the guidance of the right advisors.” Read here http://lewrockwell.com/rockwell/neocons-hate-our-guts.html

There are serious problems in the United States of America.  Some of these problems are a result of the efforts of these same neoconservatives Rockwell deplores.  They are wealthy, powerful and ruthless and, as Rockwell laments, not unwilling to attach the weak and relatedly defenseless. They control the mass media allowing them to squelch any public discussion of their policies. Under their skirts hide the largest portion of so called American Christians who vapidly support an arch enemy of the God they pretend to worship.. Those that challenge their policies are threatened and, if possible, destroyed.

Voltaire is credited with this quote: “To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”  If Voltaire was correct we had better wake up because the American people have lost control of their nation which is now being ruled by the neoconservatives.

Being disciples of Plato, Machiavelli, and Strauss; Neocons manipulate the nation with lies, half lies, and distortions.  Their agenda for America is moral degradation, racial strife, suffocating multi-culturalism, open borders, stifling debt, pandemic mendacity, constant self-serving war, and ultimate destruction.

Their strategy is to use the United States of America to conquer the world with them as the “philosopher kings”. As we fight their war we accumulate debt to their kin who control the monetary system. Rockwell nails their agenda: “constant war, the police state, the welfare state, militarism, and Soviet-like thought control”.

The U. S. media is a source of constant propaganda, outright distortion, serious omissions, lies and detrimental manipulation; it serves a neocon agenda, at the expense of our citizens.

It is their lucre that motivates Presidential candidates and their media that controls them. True reformers like candidate Ron Paul are not allowed to gain traction.   Elections are a sham.

Neocon promotion of immigration has destroyed our culture and open borders are jeopardizing national sovereignty.

We are on life support!  Our manufacturing base has been perforated, our integrity is gone, our people are mostly ignorant, and our government is controlled by aliens. The neocon infusion of money will keep us afloat for as long as we are needed but what then?

At the founding of our nation we heard a lot about natural law.  Natural law is a humanistic substitute for the Law God gave us in His Word.  When we forsook Biblical Law we also forsook natural law.  Homosexuality and homosexual marriage defy the created order while. centralization and multiculturalism destroy God-given diversity.

The legal system is in shambles.  The courts fail to provide justice and the jails overflow with people that should never have been arrested.  We lead the world in jailing our own citizens.

In a 1575 sermon entitled “Armed for the Fight Against Grave and Serious Error” John Calvin said, “—when a sin is deepening and spreading because of silent acquiescence in it, we must deal with it.  If we only respond when the illness is deep-rooted we will be too late. — Anything that might hold us back must be cast aside, even if it involves family or friends, or those joined by the closes possible ties in this world.  All such thing must be disregarded if souls purchased by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ are being led astray to be ruined and lost forever, and if things that were once well established are being overturned.  Other- wise, we will have a state of total confusion, to the extent that no one will know that the Gospel came from Jesus Christ.”

In 1575 Calvin spoke from the power of the Reformation backdrop.  He understood the need to protect and defend the true Gospel.  We have long since passed the “too late” point.  Christianity has had open borders for too long.  Error is pandemic making Calvin’s call for effective, prompt confrontation impossible.  We are living in utter confusion where millions of Christians have forsaken the power of the Gospel and are lost forever.  The dark clouds of despotism have already covered the United States of America and serious judgment seems imminent.

Notable dissident Adam Kokesh recently wrote: As long as we remain as pack animals, we will be restrained by those who would exploit us. As long as we willingly accept the subversion of our own potential, we will remain in such a childlike state of immaturity, uncertainty, and subservience. This is about how you think, how you act, how you treat other people, what you eat, what you buy, who you associate with, and how you appreciate the unique gift that is your own will. The message of freedom demands better people. Step up.

Kokesh does not set a specific criterion for “better people”. His admonition is on target – America will not change until its people change.  Groups of humans may agree on principles of right and wrong but their agreement is based on the opinions of men and the opinions of men can be permanently changed by another more powerful man.  Human concepts of right and wrong always lead to tyranny.

There is only one viable source of right and wrong – the Word of God.  Human sources of right and wrong are mutable; Biblical right and wrong is immutable.

It was their distant relative, Moses, who received the Law from the Creator – Neocons need the perfect Law along with the rest of God’s creation.  Disobedience got us into this mess and obedience is the only way out.

We exist at the pleasure of those who hold our debt.  When we are no longer useful the nation will self-destruct.

Will Seif al Islam Lead the Expulsion of the ISIS Affiliate, Al Fajr Libya?

Time will tell…

With the Abu Baker al-Siddiq Brigade, Zintan, Libya…

A second interview by this observer with Seif al Islam Gadhafi, formerly the heir apparent to his father Moammar, was sought and finally arranged as a follow up to an earlier one focusing of my interest in the Imam Musa Sadr case. That case involves a great crime against a great man and conciliator and his historic cause, and exposes those who betrayed him in Lebanon and two other countries while swearing their personal devotion and shedding crocodile tears over the past 36 years. That research is nearing completion and publication awaits DNA results from body samples more credible than the ones offered by the Bosnia laboratory two years ago and immediately demonstrated to be fraudulent. The story of why that particular lab was chosen and by who goes to the essence of the current stonewalling campaign with respect to informing the public about what exactly happened to Imam Sadr and his partners on 8/3l/1978 in Tripoli, Libya. It also identifies who instructed Gadhafi to kill them over the strong objections from the PLO’s Yassir Arafat who spoke with Gadhafi and tried to save the trio of Lebanese Shia.

But our discussion soon turned to other subject as Seif’s jailers may have taken seriously my joke that if they extended the original 20 minutes I was granted to two hours, I would deliver to them 10 US Visas and they could fill in any names the might choose. Truth told, of course I could not even get myself a passport renewal as former US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman reportedly sneered at a US Embassy Christmas party a few years back, “Lamb will serve ten years hard time in the Feds for hobnobbing with terrorists (Hezbollah in those days…who knows today?) when we get him back home.” I admit that Jeff and I both have a problem with Hezbollah. His is because Hezbollah just may liberate Palestine and mine is that Hezbollah needs to do more in Lebanon and use 90 minutes of Parliament’s time, where it has the power, to grant Palestinian refugees in Lebanon the right to work and to own a home.

Meanwhile, Da’ish (IS) is metastasizing fast in Libya through its main affiliate al Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn) and plans to add Tripoli, to its Islamic Caliphate along with Baghdad, Damascus, Amman and Beirut during the coming months and if necessary, years. This, according to Seif al Islam and representatives of the Zintan brigades based southwest of Tripoli as well as two representatives of other tribes and militia moving toward supporting the still vital Gadhafi regime remnants.

Libya may be the lowest hanging ripe fruit within easy reach of Da’ish (IS) and its growing number of affiliates, according to US Ambassador Deborah Jones during a recent visit to the US Embassy in Malta, to discuss her own problems in Libya which include the 8/31/14 take-over by al Fajr Libya (FL) of the US embassy compound barely a month after it was evacuated and moved to Tunisia for the second time since February of 2011. Secretary of State John Kerry reassured the media in Washington recently that “the embassy was not really closed, but had moved out of Libya”. One Religion Professor at Tripoli University joked last week that “Kerry is correct, the US embassy is here but it’s in a state of occultation. We can’t see it but it’s around and watches us.” A Libyan photographer who was at the embassy compound when Al Fajr Libya (FL) arrived reported that the Da’ish (IS) affiliate had moved into buildings inside the embassy complex claiming that they would ‘protect it’ as they carted off boxes of documents for ‘safe keeping.’ FL is described by a former Dean at Tripoli U. as between al Nusra and Da’ish (IS) with a fragile partnership between the two and presenting to the public “A Good cop-Bad cop tag-team with differences to be worked out once all the infidels are vanquished.

Libya, as with the Arab Maghreb, is on the cusp of a new wave of Islamist groups, and is moving beyond al-Qaeda of Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Abdelmalek Droukdel, to Baghdadi’s ISIS and its widely perceived logical offshoot ISIM being planted in North Africa and the Sahel. The threat of the Da’ish (Islamic State is already deeply anchored and expanding in the now lawless Libya, according to UN envoy Bernardino León. Several Libyan organizations recently announced their loyalty to IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. This has confirmed a speculation that IS has penetrated Libyan public institutions. The Ansar al-Sharia group, affiliated with ISIS, has declared authority during the last several days over the coastal city of Darna which is located strategically between Benghazi and the Egyptian border – just 289 km (179 miles) and 333 km (206 miles), respectively.

Countless militia are forming, merging, changing names and lying low as perceived interests dictate. Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria was retitled, revitalized and repackaged to enhance its appeal on social media as has the Furqan Brigade of the AQIM in Tunisia. Ansar Al-Sharia is another one becoming very active.The Uqba bin Nafi Brigade, has just declared allegiance to ISIS as has the Islamic Caliphate in the Islamic Maghreb. al-Ummah Brigade, which operates out of Libyan coasts and airports, another is Al-Battar is attracting pro-ISIS elements. Majlis Shura Shabab al-Islam (the Islamic Youth Shura Council), or MSSI. According to Libyan sources and journalist Adam al-Sabiri, writing in Al Akbar, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asked these elements to deploy to the Libyan front to counter the attacks by the Libyan army led by Khalifa Haftar as part of Operation Dignity seeking to “purge Libya of terrorists.”

Libyan friends, some from three years ago, advise that more people have been killed in the past three years than during the 2011 revolution and they now fear a Somalia-like “failed state” given all the weapons, lawlessness, and growing number of Islamists. The South of Libya has not been spared the lawlessness, as tribal battles continue for control of a lucrative smuggling trade. Friends point out that the country no longer even bothers to celebrate the National Holiday commemorating the 10/23/2011 “total liberation of Libya.” “It’s a cruel joke” my friend Hinde advised as she explains that many Libyans yearn for the stability of the Gadhafi days. “Maybe wanting to turn the clock back is the same in Iraq and Egypt and Syria?” she wondered.

“The rampant regional, ideological and tribal conflicts are worse than the rule of the dictator,” said Salah Mahmud al-Akuri, a doctor in Benghazi. “Some Libyans are looking back to the old regime.”

Amidst all the chaos, Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni claimed last week that groups loyal to the IS, such as al Fajr Libya, are presently in control of the city of Derna and other Libyan towns and have begun summoning townspeople to public squares to witness declarations of fealty to Da’ish (IS), even beginning their signature public executions. Libya’s “government” claims that its “army” is preparing to expel Fajr Libya (FL) and retake the capital, as more militia rush to join FL. Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani’s said in a statement this week that he gave orders to the government forces to “advance toward Tripoli to liberate it and to free it from the grip of al Fajr Libya”. The Libyan embassy in Washington told a House Foreign Affairs committee staffer that they expect that residents in Tripoli will launch “a civil disobedience campaign until the arrival of the army.” Walking around the former “Green Square” this observer saw no signs of this rather he observed citizens stocking up on necessities or packing their cars. Later, Thani added, military forces in the strife-torn country “have absolutely united to also recapture Libya’s second city Benghazi from the local IS affiliate, al Fajr Liyba (FL). Leading one to wonder whether the Libyan “army” will fare better than Maliki’s did in Mosul and Anbar.

According to students and staff at Tripoli University, (known as Fatah University during the Gadhafi decades) a few of whom this observer first met in the summer of 2011, and who lived the political events in their country since while some of their friends and relatives, as in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, are preparing to leave and start a new life somewhere. Hasan, a Gadhafi supporter I was with nearly daily three years ago in Tripoli still curses what, “NATO did this to our country. The Gadhafi regime was changing as you know Franklin, but the reformers were prevented from making the changes that Seif al Islam and his associates got their father to agree to. Remember when Saif said “My father wants to live in a tent where he is most happy and write a history of the Jamahiriya (land of the masses). He will offer advice but have just a ceremonial role out of politics? You remember that? We believed Seif didn’t we?. Anyhow, khalas!, Libya is finished! NATO gave it to Da’ish just as they gave Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to Iran.”

Libya is now moving beyond al-Qaeda of Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Abdelmalek Droukdel, to Baghdadi’s ISIS and its widely perceived logical offshoot Islamic State in the Islamic Maghreb (ISIM-Damis) now expanding in North Africa and the Sahel. Former rebels who fought against Gadhafi have formed powerful militias and seized control of large parts of Libya in the past three years. Back in mid-august of 2011, the late American journalist Marie Colvin and I stood on the balcony of the Corinthia Hotel opposites the still empty Marriott where some kid was practicing sniping from the roof, at my expense, as I pointed out to Marie a body floating just off the beach of the Mediterranean across the road. We walked over and examined it and decided while it was dressed in religious garb the man may have been an army deserter; there were increasing numbers in those days, because of his military style boots. We alerted some militia guys driving along the corniche who said they would report the body and before long an ambulance did arrive. Two of the militia waded out waist deep and pulled in the bloated body to shore, unlaced his tan leather boots while holding their noses from the stench. They then threw the new boots in the back of their pick-up and drove off with no more than a smiling ‘shukran habibis’ (thanks dears). Later that day Marie and I counted a column of 143 pickups with AK-47 jubilant fist waving rebels entering along the coastal road toward downtown Tripoli having come from battles in the east around Misrata. In the next few days we discussed how there seemed to be countless ‘free-cigarettes, $200 on the first of each month and your personal Kalasnikov’ militia popping up like mushrooms after a summer rain. Three years ago one of their battle cries was “Death to Gadafi—Yes to Freedom!” Today one hears around Tripoli another slogan from the lips of young men many of whom may be the same, chanting, “Death to the kafirs (disbelievers,” or infidels) Yes to Islam!Abas (that’s all!”

Seif el Islam still resides at his cell in Zintan which, even though jail is jail, has been upgraded from when he was captured in the Sahara making his way toward Niger and his finger was cut off as a warning.

Seif, has proposed talks and is ready to participate in bringing together Libya’s warring parties and aiding the transition to what he claims he was working on before the February 17, 2011 uprising in Benzhazi which quickly spread. Seif’s team would likely include his father’s cousin and confident Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, former Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kane, long-time Libyan diplomat, the widely respected Omar el Hamdi now is Cairo, and Seif’s sister Aisha, now living with his mother and children in the Gulf.

Seif has no illusions of returning Libya to the past, but argues that elements of the former regime deserved to be heard. “We were in the process of making broad reforms and my father gave me the responsibly to see them through. Unfortunately the revolt happened and both sides made mistakes that are now allowing extreme Islamist group like Da’ish to pick up the pieces and turn Libya into an extreme fundamentalist entity in their regional plans.”

With respect to Seifs trials, whether ins the Tripoli courthouse or at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the odds of either happening anytime soon, ior at all, are fading as negotiations for an arrangement are reportedly progressing.

A solution is being sought, according to sources at the Justice Ministry in Tripoli because there are many problems with Seifs case which was supposed to begin earlier this year, and the case has been criticized by a number of international actors. Not least for which how Libya and the ICC have handled their cases. For example, Human Rights Watch has accused the Libyan government of failing to provide adequate legal representation and the ICC it has been unable to compel the Libyan government to allow it access — just one of many challenges to the ICC’s legitimacy in recent years. Meanwhile it is likely that Seif’s jailers, who increasing respects and admires him, may have other ideas that would enhance their own standing in Libya. In addition, certain NATO countries are said to be privately discussing with Washington, Paris London and Bonn the idea of finding a role for Seif and certain of his associates and family members in “the new Libya.”

According to Seif, and former regime officials, several NATO countries have sent messages claiming they did not intend for his father to be killed but were searching during the summer of 2011 for a refuge for his father in Africa. Seif does not believe them.

Seif al Islam still has substantial influence among tribes still loyal to Gaddafi as well as former regime officials in the army and government. The delegation Seif could assemble, including Ahmad Gadaff al-Dam, would benefit from the latter’s still strong connections with Arab governments, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as well as some European countries.

More on this and other subjects related to Seif and the growing international recognition over the need for expulsion of Islamists from Libya, and a possible significant role for Seif, are expected to be discussed publicly soon.

Risky Business “Easy Money”

Here we go again.

Last week, the country’s biggest mortgage lenders scored a couple of key victories that will allow them to ease lending standards, crank out more toxic assets, and inflate another housing bubble.  Here’s what’s going on.

On Monday,  the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Mel Watt, announced that Fannie and Freddie would slash the minimum down-payment requirement on mortgages from 5 percent to 3 percent while making loans more available to people with spotty credit. If this all sounds hauntingly familiar, it should. It was less than 7 years ago that shoddy lending practices blew up the financial system precipitating the deepest slump since the Great Depression. Now Watt wants to repeat that catastrophe by pumping up another credit bubble. Here’s the story from the Washington Post:

“When it comes to taking out a mortgage, two factors can stand in the way: the price of the mortgage,…and the borrower’s credit profile.”

On Monday, the head of the agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac outlined … how he plans to make it easier for borrowers on both fronts. Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, did not give exact timing on the initiatives. But most of them are designed to encourage the industry to extend mortgages to a broader swath of borrowers.

Here’s what Watt said about his plans in a speech at the Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention in Las Vegas:

Saving enough money for a downpayment is often cited as the toughest hurdle for first-time buyers in particular. Watt said that Fannie and Freddie are working to develop “sensible and responsible” guidelines that will allow them to buy mortgages with down payments as low as 3 percent, instead of the 5 percent minimum that both institutions currently require.”

Does Watt really want to “encourage the industry to extend mortgages to a broader swath of borrowers” or is this just another scam to enrich bankers at the expense of the public?  It might be worth noting at this point that Watt’s political history casts doubt on his real objectives.   According to Open Secrets, among the Top 20 contributors to Watt’s 2009-2010 campaign were Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Bank of New York Mellon, American bankers Association, US Bancorp, and The National Association of Realtors. (“Top 20 Contributors, 2009-2010“, Open Secrets)

Man oh man,  this guy’s got all of Wall Street rooting for him. Why is that, I wonder? Is it because he’s faithfully executing his office and defending the public’s interests or is it because he’s a reliable stooge who brings home the bacon for fatcat bankers and their brood?

This is such a farce, isn’t it? I mean, c’mon, do you really think that the big banks make political contributions out of the kindness of their heart or because they want something in return?  And do you really think that a guy who is supported by Goldman Sachs has your “best interests” in mind?  Don’t make me laugh.

The reason that Obama picked Watt was because he knew he could be trusted to do whatever Wall Street wanted, and that’s precisely what he’s doing. Smaller down payments and looser underwriting are just the beginning; teaser rates, balloon payments, and liars loans are bound to follow. In fact, there’s a funny story about credit scores in the Washington Post that explains what’s really going on behind the scenes. See if you can figure it out:

“Most housing advocates agree that a bigger bang for the buck would come from having lenders lower the unusually high credit scores that they’re now demanding from borrowers.

After the housing market tanked, Fannie and Freddie forced the industry to buy back billions of dollars in loans. In a bid to protect themselves from further financial penalties, lenders reacted by imposing credit scores that exceed what Fannie and Freddie require. Housing experts say the push to hold lenders accountable for loose lending practices of the past steered the industry toward the highest-quality borrowers, undermining the mission of Fannie and Freddie to serve the broader population, including low- to moderate- income borrowers.

Today, the average credit score on a loan backed by Fannie and Freddie is close to 745, versus about 710 in the early 2000s, according to Moody’s Analytics. And lenders say they won’t ease up until the government clarifies rules that dictate when Fannie and Freddie can take action against them.” (Washington Post)

Can you see what’s going on? The banks have been requiring higher credit scores than Fannie or Freddie.

But why? After all, the banks are in the lending business, so the more loans they issue the more money they make, right?

Right. But the banks don’t care about the short-term dough. They’d rather withhold credit and slow the economy in order to blackmail the government into doing what they want.

And what do they want?

They want looser regulations and they want to know that Fannie and Freddie aren’t going to demand their money back (“put backs”) when they sell them crappy mortgages that won’t get repaid. You see, the banks figure that once they’ve off-loaded a loan to Fannie and Freddie, their job is done.  So, if the mortgage blows up two months later, they don’t think they should have to pay for it. They want the taxpayer to pay for it. That’s what they’ve been whining about for the last 5 years. And that’s what Watt is trying to fix for them. Here’s the story from Dave Dayen:

“Watt signaled to mortgage bankers that they can loosen their underwriting standards, and that Fannie and Freddie will purchase the loans anyway, without much recourse if they turn sour. The lending industry welcomed the announcement as a way to ease uncertainty and boost home purchases, a key indicator for the economy. But it’s actually a surrender to the incorrect idea that expanding risky lending can create economic growth.

Watt’s remarks come amid a concerted effort by the mortgage industry to roll back regulations meant to prevent the type of housing market that nearly obliterated the economy in 2008. Bankers have complained to the media that the oppressive hand of government prevents them from lending to anyone with less-than-perfect credit. Average borrower credit scores are historically high, and lenders make even eligible borrowers jump through enough hoops to garner publicity. Why, even Ben Bernanke can’t get a refinance done! (Actually, he could, and fairly easily, but the anecdote serves the industry’s argument.)

(“The Mortgage Industry Is Strangling the Housing Market and Blaming the Government“, Dave Dayen, The New Republic)

Can you see what a fraud this is?  6 years have passed since Lehman crashed and the scum-sucking bankers are still  fighting tooth-and-nail to unwind the meager provisions that have been put in place to avoid another system-shattering disaster. It’s crazy. These guys should all be in Gitmo pounding rocks and instead they’re setting the regulatory agenda. Explain that to me? And this whole thing about blackmailing the government because they don’t want to be held responsible for the bad mortgages they sold to the GSE’s is particularly irritating. Here’s more from Dave Dayen:

“After the housing market tanked, Fannie and Freddie forced the industry to buy back billions of dollars in loans. In a bid to protect themselves from further financial penalties, lenders reacted by imposing credit scores that exceed what Fannie and Freddie require. ….And lenders say they won’t ease up until the government clarifies rules that dictate when Fannie and Freddie can take action against them.”

So the industry has engaged in an insidious tactic: tightening lending well beyond required standards, and then claiming the GSEs make it impossible for them to do business. For example, Fannie and Freddie require a minimum 680 credit score to purchase most loans, but lenders are setting their targets at 740. They are rejecting eligible borrowers….so they can profit much more from a regulation-free zone down the line.

So, I ask you, dear reader; is that blackmail or is it blackmail?

And what does Watt mean when he talks about “developing sensible and responsible guidelines’ that will allow them (borrowers) to buy mortgages with down payments as low as 3 percent”?

What a joke.  Using traditional underwriting standards, (the likes of which had been used for  the entire post-war period until we handed the system over to the banks) a lender would require a 10 or 20 percent down, decent credit scores, and a job. The only reason Watt wants to wave those requirements is so the banks can fire-up the old credit engine and dump more crap-ass mortgages on Uncle Sam.  That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. It’s infuriating!

Let me fill you in on a little secret: Down payments matter! In fact, people who put more down on a home (who have “more skin in the game”) are much less likely to default.  According to David Battany, executive vice president of PennyMac, “there is a strong correlation between down payments to mortgage default. The risk of default almost doubles with every 1%.”

Economist Dean Baker says the same thing in a recent blog post:

“The delinquency rate, which closely follows the default rate, is several times higher for people who put 5 percent or less down on a house than for people who put 20 percent or more down.

Contrary to what some folks seem to believe, getting moderate income people into a home that they subsequently lose to foreclosure or a distressed sale is not an effective way for them to build wealth, even if it does help build the wealth of the banks.”

(“Low Down Payment Mortgages Have Much Higher Default Rates“, Dean Baker, CEPR)

Now take a look at this chart from Dr. Housing Bubble which helps to illustrate the dangers of low down payments in terms of increased delinquencies:

Data on mortgage delinquencies by downpayment. Source:  Felix Salmon 

“When the mortgage industry starts complaining about the 14 million people who would be denied the chance to buy a qualified mortgage if they don’t have a 5% downpayment, it’s worth remembering that qualified mortgages for people who don’t have a 5% downpayment have a delinquency rate of 16% over the course of the whole housing cycle.” (“Why a sizable down payment is important“, Dr. Housing Bubble)

So despite what Watt thinks,  higher down payments mean fewer defaults, fewer foreclosures, fewer shocks to the market, and greater financial stability.

And here’s something else that Watt should mull over:  The housing market isn’t broken and doesn’t need to be fixed.  It’s doing just fine, thank you very much. First of all, sales and prices are already above their historic trend. Check it out from economist Dean Baker:

“If we compare total sales (new and existing homes) with sales in the pre-bubble years 1993-1995, they would actually be somewhat higher today, even after adjusting for population growth. While there may be an issue of many people being unable to qualify for mortgages because of their credit history, this does not appear to be having a negative effect on the state of market. Prices are already about 20 percent above their trend levels.” (“Total Home Sales Are At or Above Trend“, Dean Baker, CEPR)

Got it? Sales and prices are ALREADY where they should be, so there’s no need to lower down payments and ease credit to start another orgy of speculation. We don’t need that.

Second, the quality of today’s mortgages ARE BETTER THAN EVER, so why mess with success? Take a look at this from Black Knight Financial Services and you’ll see what I mean:

“Today, the Data and Analytics division of Black Knight Financial Services … released its November Mortgage Monitor Report, which found that loans originated in 2013 are proving to be the best-performing mortgages on record…..

“Looking at the most current mortgage origination data, several points become clear,” said Herb Blecher, senior vice president of Black Knight Financial Services’ Data & Analytics division. “First is that heightened credit standards have resulted in this year being the best-performing vintage on record. Even adjusting for some of these changes, such as credit scores and loan-to-values, we are seeing total delinquencies for 2013 loans at extremely low levels across every product category.”

(“Black Knight Financial Services’ Mortgage Performance Data Shows 2013 Loans Best Performing on Record“, LPS)

Okay, so sales and prices are fine and mortgage quality is excellent. So why not leave the bloody system alone? As the saying goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But you know why they’re going to keep tinkering with the housing market. Everyone knows why. It’s because the banks can’t inflate another big-honking credit bubble unless they churn out zillions of shi**y mortgages that they offload onto Fannie and Freddie. That’s just the name of the game: Grind out the product (mortgages), pack it into sausages (securities and bonds), leverage up to your eyeballs (borrow as much as humanly possible), and dump the junk-paper on yield-chasing baboons who think they’re buying triple A “risk free” bonds.

Garbage in, garbage out.  Isn’t this how the banks make their money?

You bet it is, and in that regard things have gotten a helluva a lot scarier since last Wednesday’s announcement that the banks are NOT going to be required to hold any capital against the securities they create from bundles of mortgages.

Huh?

You read that right. According to the New York Times:  “there will be no risk retention to speak of, at least on residential mortgage loans that are securitized.”

But how can that be, after all, it wasn’t subprime mortgages that blew up the financial system (subprime mortgages only totaled $1.5 at their peak), but the nearly $10 trillion in subprime infected mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that stopped trading in the secondary market after a French Bank stopped taking redemptions in July 2007. (a full year before the crisis brought down Lehman Brothers) . That’s what brought the whole rattling financial system to a grinding halt. Clearly, if the banks had had a stake in those shabby MBS— that is, if they were required to set aside 5 or 10 percent capital as insurance in the event that some of these toxic assets went south– then the whole financial collapse could have been avoided, right?

Right. It could have been avoided. But the banks don’t want to hold any capital against their stockpile of rancid assets, in fact, they don’t want to use their own freaking money at all, which is why 90 percent of all mortgages are financed by Uncle Sugar. It’s because the banks are just as broke as they were in 2008 when the system went off the cliff. Here’s a summary from the New York Times:

“Once upon a time, those who made loans would profit only if the loan were paid back. If the borrower defaulted, the lender would suffer.

That idea must have seemed quaint in 2005, as the mortgage lending boom reached a peak on the back of mushrooming private securitizations of mortgages, which were intended to transfer the risk away from those who made the loans to investors with no real knowledge of what was going on.

Less well remembered is that there was a raft of real estate securitizations once before, in the 1920s. The securities were not as complicated, but they had the same goal — making it possible for lenders to profit without risking capital.

The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 set out to clean that up. Now, there would be “risk retention.” Lenders would have to have “skin in the game.” Not 100 percent of the risk, as in the old days when banks made mortgage loans and retained them until they were paid back, but enough to make the banks care whether the loans were repaid.

At least that was the idea. The details were left to regulators, and it took more than four years for them to settle on the details, which they did this week.

The result is that there will be no risk retention to speak of, at least on residential mortgage loans that are securitized.

“…..Under Dodd-Frank, the general rule was to be that if a lender wanted to securitize mortgages, that lender had to keep at least 5 percent of the risk…….But when the final rule was adopted this week, that idea was dropped.”  (“Banks Again Avoid Having Any Skin in the Game”, New York Times)

No skin in the game, you say?

That means the taxpayer is accepting 100 percent of the risk. How fair is that?

Let’s review: The banks used to lend money to creditworthy borrowers and keep the loans on their books.

They don’t do that anymore, in fact, they’re not really banks at all, they’re just intermediaries who sell their loans to the USG or investors.

This arrangement has changed the incentives structure. Now the goal is quantity not quality.  “How many loans can I churn-out and dump on Uncle Sam or mutual funds etc.” That’s how bankers think now.  That’s the objective.

Regulations are bad because regulations stipulate that loans must be of a certain quality, which reduces the volume of loans and shrinks profits. (Can’t have that!) Therefore, the banks must use their money to hand-pick their own regulators  (“You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Mel”) and ferociously lobby against any rules that limit their ability to issue credit to anyone who can fog a mirror. Now you understand how modern-day banking works.

It would be hard to imagine a more corrupt system.

Mary Poppins, Elizabeth Warren & The American Banking System

When I saw the movie “Saving Mr. Banks” during one of my interminably-long plane rides back from Syria, I liked it so much that I actually went out and bought a copy of the 1964 “Mary Poppins” Disney classic it was based on — the one with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke frolicking across the rooftops of London.

And much to my surprise, I discovered that Mary Poppins might have been one of the world’s first hippies.  Who woulda thought!  And what was even more amazing is that Mary Poppins was one of the first people to warn us about the .

And fortunately for those of us living here in America one hundred years later, Elizabeth Warren has now become the new Mary Poppins — also warning us about the dangers and perfidy of big bankers and big banks.

If only Americans would start paying attention to Elizabeth Warren as much as they paid attention to Julie Andrews!

“Hey, Elizabeth!” I also want to shout on the rooftops like Dick VanDyke, “voters aren’t listening to you!”  Maybe if Disney studios made a movie about you too?  Then maybe voters would finally start to listen.

According to Warren, the American middle class has been absolutely decimated by the banking and credit-card lobbies.

And yet voters still keep falling for all those glossy ads and happy lies that still keep getting pro-big-bank candidates elected to the White House and Congress even though voters can clearly see that they themselves are losing their jobs, having their homes repossessed, becoming slaves to their student loans and getting ripped off bigtime by credit-card debt.  But then I guess that those syrupy ads actually do prove that “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” after all.

In the heroic country of Iceland, their well-informed voters have vigorously fought back against bankster greed and have even re-written their constitution in order to make lending-bubbles and bank fraud illegal.

But in America, the opposite happens.  Here in America our very own government, the very one that bank lobbyists have chosen for us to elect, is handing over billions of our very own hard-earned dollars to big banks just as fast as it can.  And Congress is always writing new bankruptcy laws that favor banksters over the middle class every time.  Mary Poppins would be livid, of course, but nobody else seems to even notice these days — except for Elizabeth Warren.

And even the Federal Reserve is dancing over the rooftops in glee as it too gives away our money to the banksters just as fast as it possibly can, singing “” as gleefully hands over giant bags of taxpayers’ money to Chase, Bank of America, CitiBank and Goldman Sachs.

And the Federal Reserve’s chim chem cher-ee chummy coverups are going through the roof too.

Plus the Senate just vetoed a bill that would have given students a break from paying up to 12% interest on their college loans too.  According to Warren, “This isn’t complicated.  It’s a choice – a choice that raises a fundamental question about who the United States Senate works for.  Does it work for those who can hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists to protect tax loopholes for billionaires and profits for the big banks?  Or does it work for those who work hard, play by the rules, and are trying to build a future for themselves and their families?”

Not to mention the hidden (and not-so-hidden) fees that banks gleefully charge us customers for no reason at all.

To try to completely understand how banksters and their toadies in Congress and the Department of Justice are robbing the rest of us blind, you just gotta watch this video of Bill Moyers interviewing bank-fraud expert Thomas K. Black.  Seriously.   You really should watch this: 

In this video, Black describes how Obama was elected by the banking industry and how Obama has totally paid back his debt to the banksters by handing them all “get out of jail free” cards.  Is being elected president really worth selling us Americans out to the banksters?  Apparently so.

“There’s no threat to capitalism like capitalists,” continues Black.  “They are destroying its underpinnings.  And when dishonest people gain an advantage in the marketplace, bad ethics drive good ethics out.  This is why we need the rule of law.”  Doesn’t Thomas K. Black sound just like Dick VanDyke, er, I mean Burt the Chimney Sweep here — as Black proposes that it’s high time to sweep clean our banks.

And now let’s talk about America’s ratings on the so-called “Misery Index”.  Apparently America rates higher on the misery charts now than it ever has, even back in the Great Depression — and probably even as high as did Mary Poppins’s 1910 London.  Thanks a lot, banksters.

Isn’t it time that American voters finally join up with Elizabeth Warren and Mary Poppins — and tell big banks and banksters to go “fly a kite!”

PS:  Speaking of money, look how much of it is being spent in the Middle East — and not here at home where it is needed!

According to a recent blog-post at , the first official estimates of the ISIS price tag from the Pentagon showed that, “the costs of intervention between mid-June and late-August was $7.5 million per day.  At that rate, the U.S. has spent on operations against ISIS as of October 8, adding up to about $2.74 billion per year.  The Pentagon has since revised the estimate up to as high as $10 million per day, or $3.65 billion per year.  In reality, both of those numbers are quite likely to be underestimates of what’s to come.”

Looks like the US military is just as bad as the US banksters when it comes to cleaning out America’s pocketbooks — after they both have put us to sleep with false promises and false news .

What we Americans really need to do these days is to once again take Mary Poppins’s advice and “Stay Awake”! 

Bethel Church’s “Apostle” Bill Johnson: A Comedy of Errors, Part 1

Bill Johnson is no stranger to controversy.  For one thing, he claims to be an apostle, as in the unique position held by the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ.  He was given this high honor by C. Peter Wagner who holds many titles himself, including president of Global Harvest Ministries, chancellor of Wagner Leadership Institute, convening apostle of theNew Apostolic Roundtable, and my personal favorite: presiding apostle of (ICA).  So for the purpose of this article I’ll dub him Presiding Apostle Peter or PA Peter for short.   What’s important to know about him is that he’s sort of like the pope of the “new apostolic-prophetic movement.”

Following is ICA’s definition of modern day apostle:

An apostle is a Christian leader gifted, taught, commissioned, and sent by God with the authority to establish the foundational government of the church within an assigned sphere of ministry by hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches and by setting things in order accordingly for the growth and maturity of the church.

What role do the so-called apostles play?  There are a couple of tasks, says PA Peter.  First, apostles are to “set things in order” and “they’re to assure that the body of Christ is operating on the basis of sound, biblical doctrine.”

Sound biblical doctrine my Aunt Fanny!

PA Peter and his self-proclaimed apostles and prophets are out-and-out false teachers!  These men and women (yes, there are women apostles) are well aware that accusations of heresy have been leveled against them by a large number of highly regarded orthodox Bible scholars and still they continue the pretense.

In this two part series you’ll discover the many twists and turns the new apostolic-prophetic movement has taken over the years and why those of us who are in an online discernment ministry believe it is a clear and present danger to the Body of Christ, thus we will continue warning the brethren.  ()

Now, keep in mind that the men and women involved in this heretical movement are sincere in their belief that they’re in the same league as the Old Testament prophets and the Lord’s hand-picked disciples who later became the Twelve Apostles.  The leaders have convinced their followers that the office of apostleship is not reserved for a select few, as the Bible teaches.  Moreover, they’ve led people to believe that Christ is once again choosing apostles and prophets to preside over His Church.  Listen to ’ dire warning:

Those claiming the office of apostle seek authority equal to, or at least rivaling, the authority of the original twelve apostles. There is absolutely no biblical evidence to support such an understanding of the role of apostle today. This would fit with the New Testament’s warning against false apostles ().

So – if it’s true that Christ is giving authority to a select few apostles and prophets why, pray tell, would our Lord give it to individuals who possess questionable character?  I’ll have more on this in a moment.

Suffice it to say C. Peter Wagner and Bill Johnson believe that the Lord has given them the authority to rule over the Church.  So – if it’s also true that the so-called apostles arecalled by Christ to form a government to control the Church and that they will hold Church leaders accountable then who, pray tell, is going to hold them accountable?

Itching Ears

Without getting too far afield, since the new apostolic-prophetic movement’s inception it has been referred to in a number of different ways, i.e. …Latter Rain……Manifest[ed] Sons of God…Kingdom Now…Charismatic Renewal…Positive Confession and a few others.  Its current handle, (NAR), was coined by Presiding Apostle Peter in the 1990s.  He “reinvigorated the Latter Rain/Manifest Sons of God false prophecies about a great endtime revival accompanied by signs and wonders.”  As I said, NAR leaders teach that God is restoring the lost offices of church governance – and they are His chosen ones to bring it to fruition!

Do not be surprised:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,;and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths

In Paul’s final warning to the Church he never suggested that they embrace new movements.  On the contrary, he warned that they would not listen to the truth.  Commentator clarifies:

Having itching ears; for their ears itch, and they must have those that will scratch them. The disease of lust in their souls brings forth an itch in their ears, that they will have a mind to hear only such as will by scratching please them.

Shall they heap to themselves teachers, will be finding out teachers, not according to God’s, but to their own hearts; and there will be plenty of them to be found, they shall heap them up, choosing them without any judgment, regarding nothing but whether they will not be smart upon their lusts. (emphasis in original)

Paul’s message throughout his entire letter was that the church must “follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me” (1:13); “guard the good deposit entrusted to you (1:14); “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2:2).

Unity Over Doctrine

Now to Bill Johnson, head pastor of Bethel Church (BC).  BC’s leadership holds to the theology of the (WoF) movement.  WoF doctrine teaches the occult belief that:

He [God] framed the world with His words. You can’t build without substance. He took words — faith-Filled words were God’s substance. Here, essentially, is what God did. God filled His words with faith. He used His words as containers to hold His faith and contain that spiritual force and transport it out there into the vast darkness by saying ‘Light be!’ That’s the way God transported His faith causing creation and transformation. ()

One word: unscriptural!

BC also has its roots in the early1980s movement dubbed by C. Peter Wagner the (TW).

Following is an excerpt from Apologetics Index.  What they’ve laid out here should help prevent people from getting drawn into TW:

[D]istinctives of the Third Wave movement include — but are not limited to — the following:

• The baptism with the Holy Spirit is identified with conversion. This is unlike other Pentecostal movements, in which the baptism with the Spirit is either a separate and/or a recurring experience.
• the belief that the spiritual gifts are valid for today; that Christians can ask for, receive and learn how to use these spiritual gifts (and become better at using them with practice.
• the belief that the primary use of the is for ministry in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit – both to bless and heal those inside the church and to minister to those outside the church (“.”). This ministry includes , , , etcetera.
• active promotion of unity — sometimes at any cost (e.g. the ‘s acceptance of certain Word-Faith teachers. “ over “
• the belief that people, Christians included, can be possessed (or ‘demonized’ — or ‘oppressed,’ something seen as a lesser form of possession) by evil spirits with or without their consent
• the belief that objects or places can project evil influence and act as conduits for demonic oppression
• the belief that traumatic events, either in our lives or in our ancestral past, can make us particularly vulnerable to demonic influence, possession or oppression
• the belief that some Christians — using appropriate spiritual gifts — can identify and cast out demonic spirits
• a general acceptance of theology, which has led to the practice of so-called ‘‘ or SLSW — an unbiblical concept in which Christians identify (through ‘‘) and then target (with SLSW) ‘.’ (all links are AI’s)  ()

WoF and TW leaders are false teachers.  (You’ll find the names of these as well as many other false teachers on my .)   Over the years self-proclaimed apostles and prophets have managed to coax undiscerning individuals to involve themselves in some of the strangest physical manifestations imaginable.  Those who participate in church services where “signs and wonders” take place like to blame their crude behavior on the Holy Spirit.  Now, try to imagine giants of the faith such as John, Peter, James or even Paul “,” crawling on all fours barking like a dog, clucking like a chicken, jerking and twitching, rolling on the floor, themselves into a convulsive state.  People involved in NAR have done these things in the past and continue them to this day.  When I think about it, it really wouldn’t surprise me to witness Apostle Bill on all fours, nose in the air, howling like a wolf.  But I digress.

Two Super Apostles Restore A Fraud

During the alleged Lakeland Outpouring aka Lakeland Revival in Florida, a story hit the news that put NAR evangelist Todd Bentley in a bad light.  It was revealed that that the rock-star evangelist was in an adulterous relationship with a female intern – and suddenly all hell broke loose.  In my column “” I scrutinized the NAR’s leaders and pointed out that Apostle Bill,

calls those who exposed Todd Bentley as a false prophet “sharks.” He also says:

“I’ll never blame the opponents [sharks] of this outpouring for Todd’s choices [sin].  However, it had a greater effect on the outcome than any of his critics will likely own up to in this lifetime. History proves this.”

(More on the Bentley brouhaha , and .)

Apostle Bill and fellow apostate – oops! — apostle-prophet decided to involve themselves in Bentley’s “.”  Just so you know, Rick Joyner’s the founder and Executive Director of MorningStar Publications and Ministries and is a big promoter of the “new breed” of apostles and prophets.

Both Bill Johnson and Rick Joyner, who are seasoned apostle-prophets, claim to hold the title “Super-Apostle” and/or “Super-Prophet” which is comparable to holding the high office of cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.  Chew on that for a moment.  As an aside I should mention that some “” have been accused of using cultic mind control techniques on those they prey upon.

Listen to Apostle Rick pontificate about how he sees himself:

Even though I have not been able to go to journalism school, or even Bible school, in many ways I would not trade my education for anyone’s. Like Paul, I can say that what I received I did not receive from men.

I mean, really, are we supposed to believe him?  And why would we?

Now, back to Bentley.  Bringing this man under submission took place following his divorce and after he married the woman, who, by the way, wasn’t the only woman he had an extra marital affair with.  Apostle Bill was well aware that the fraud-evangelist had had a .  Both “Super-Apostles” knew that he was drunk during his Lakeland stage act yet they chose to return him to ministry.  But, then, no one has ever accused NAR leaders of doing much of anything by .

Todd Bentley is no more qualified for ministry than is disgraced televangelist/prosperity preacher , who was incarcerated for fleecing the flock (fraud).  After his release from prison, what did Bakker do?  Still craving attention, he returned to .

So – how should churches handle a person in a leadership role when he/she brings shame on the Name of our Lord Jesus?  I’ve already addressed this topic in my column entitled   In a nutshell the biblical way to handle it is for the church hierarchy to apply an appropriate level of discipline necessary to bring the person to true repentance.  Church leaders who have a “moral failing” must publically repent of his/her sin against God.  They then must seek spiritual guidance and accountability and move out of the limelight altogether.  Once the person’s restored, he/she’s most often encouraged to serve the Lord behind the scenes.  Sadly, this hasn’t been the case with Todd Bentley.  And the reason for this is that the self-appointed Super Apostles Bill and Rick found it in their hearts—not in the Bible—to reinstate the man to public ministry.

I’ll close part 1 with a plea from a genuine apostle:

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. ()

Part 2 coming up!

Resources:

—Phil Johnson interviews John MacArthur

–By John Lanagan

1. –Around 54:00 into the session, Wagner responds to a question during the Q&A. He tells the audience that when the Holy Spirit stopped revealing things through the written Word, He kept on revealing new things to us through the “Rhema Word.” He claims that the Holy Spirit still speaks to us today by giving us information that you cannot find in the 66 books of the Bible, info that the Bible doesn’t address, but it’s not contradictory.

—Tony Miano, host of Cross Encounters radio, discusses, among other things, the music of BC’s music team Jesus Culture (more below). Listen to Tony tell of his Twitter chat with Beni Johnson, Bill’s pastorette wife.

…scroll down—Apologetics Index

–On Solid Rock Resources

Bethel Church’s Music & Entertainment:

—Ken Silva

—Amy Spreeman

Watch And Weep:

—My Word Like Fire

Ukraine And Neo-Nazis

Ever since serious protest broke out in Ukraine in February the Western mainstream media, particularly in the United States, has seriously downplayed the fact that the usual suspects – the US/European Union/NATO triumvirate – have been on the same side as the neo-Nazis. In the US it’s been virtually unmentionable. I’m sure that a poll taken in the United States on this issue would reveal near universal ignorance of the numerous neo-Nazi actions, including publicly calling for death to “Russians, Communists and Jews”. But in the past week the dirty little secret has somehow poked its head out from behind the curtain a bit.

On September 9 NBCnews.com reported that “German TV shows Nazi symbols on helmets of Ukraine soldiers”. The German station showed pictures of a soldier wearing a combat helmet with the “SS runes” of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps. (Runes are the letters of an alphabet used by ancient Germanic peoples.) A second soldier was shown with a swastika on his helmet.

On the 13th, the Washington Post showed a photo of the sleeping quarter of a member of the Azov Battalion, one of the Ukrainian paramilitary units fighting the pro-Russian separatists. On the wall above the bed is a large swastika. Not to worry, the Post quoted the platoon leader stating that the soldiers embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of “romantic” idea.

Yet, it is Russian president Vladimir Putin who is compared to Adolf Hitler by everyone from Prince Charles to Princess Hillary because of the incorporation of Crimea as part of Russia. On this question Putin has stated:

The Crimean authorities have relied on the well-known Kosovo precedent, a precedent our Western partners created themselves, with their own hands, so to speak. In a situation absolutely similar to the Crimean one, they deemed Kosovo’s secession from Serbia to be legitimate, arguing everywhere that no permission from the country’s central authorities was required for the unilateral declaration of independence. The UN’s international court, based on Paragraph 2 of Article 1 of the UN Charter, agreed with that, and in its decision of 22 July 2010 noted the following, and I quote verbatim: No general prohibition may be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with regard to unilateral declarations of independence.

Putin as Hitler is dwarfed by the stories of Putin as invader (Vlad the Impaler?). For months the Western media has been beating the drums about Russia having (actually) invaded Ukraine. I recommend reading: “How Can You Tell Whether Russia has Invaded Ukraine?” by Dmitry Orlov

And keep in mind the NATO encirclement of Russia. Imagine Russia setting up military bases in Canada and Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Remember what a Soviet base in Cuba led to.

Has the United States ever set a bad example?

Ever since that fateful day of September 11, 2001, the primary public relations goal of the United States has been to discredit the idea that somehow America had it coming because of its numerous political and military acts of aggression. Here’s everyone’s favorite hero, George W. Bush, speaking a month after 9-11:

“How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am – like most Americans, I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.”

Thank you, George. Now take your pills.

I and other historians of US foreign policy have documented at length the statements of anti-American terrorists who have made it explicitly clear that their actions were in retaliation for Washington’s decades of international abominations. But American officials and media routinely ignore this evidence and cling to the party line that terrorists are simply cruel and crazed by religion; which many of them indeed are, but that doesn’t change the political and historical facts.

This American mindset appears to be alive and well. At least four hostages held in Syria recently by Islamic State militants, including US journalist James Foley, were waterboarded during their captivity. The Washington Post quoted a US official: “ISIL is a group that routinely crucifies and beheads people. To suggest that there is any correlation between ISIL’s brutality and past U.S. actions is ridiculous and feeds into their twisted propaganda.”

The Post, however, may have actually evolved a bit, adding that the “Islamic State militants … appeared to model the technique on the CIA’s use of waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

Talk given by William Blum at a Teach-In on US Foreign Policy, American University, Washington, DC, September 6, 2014

Each of you I’m sure has met many people who support American foreign policy, with whom you’ve argued and argued. You point out one horror after another, from Vietnam to Iraq. From god-awful bombings and invasions to violations of international law and torture. And nothing helps. Nothing moves this person.

Now why is that? Are these people just stupid? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions. Consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, and if you don’t deal with these basic beliefs you may as well be talking to a stone wall.

The most basic of these basic beliefs, I think, is a deeply-held conviction that no matter what the United States does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the government of the United States means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always honorable, even noble. Of that the great majority of Americans are certain.

Frances Fitzgerald, in her famous study of American school textbooks, summarized the message of these books: “The United States has been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased countries. The U.S. always acted in a disinterested fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took.”

And Americans genuinely wonder why the rest of the world can’t see how benevolent and self-sacrificing America has been. Even many people who take part in the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off some of this mindset; they march to spur America – the America they love and worship and trust – they march to spur this noble America back onto its path of goodness.

Many of the citizens fall for US government propaganda justifying its military actions as often and as naively as Charlie Brown falling for Lucy’s football.

The American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don’t want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window.

This basic belief in America’s good intentions is often linked to “American exceptionalism”. Let’s look at how exceptional US foreign policy has been. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
2. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
3. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
4. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
5. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
6. Led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American teachers, especially in Latin America.

This is indeed exceptional. No other country in all of history comes anywhere close to such a record.

So the next time you’re up against a stone wall … ask the person what the United States would have to do in its foreign policy to lose his support. What for this person would finally be TOO MUCH. If the person mentions something really bad, chances are the United States has already done it, perhaps repeatedly.

Keep in mind that our precious homeland, above all, seeks to dominate the world. For economic reasons, nationalistic reasons, ideological, Christian, and for other reasons, world hegemony has long been America’s bottom line. And let’s not forget the powerful Executive Branch officials whose salaries, promotions, agency budgets and future well-paying private sector jobs depend upon perpetual war. These leaders are not especially concerned about the consequences for the world of their wars. They’re not necessarily bad people; but they’re amoral, like a sociopath is.

Take the Middle East and South Asia. The people in those areas have suffered horribly because of Islamic fundamentalism. What they desperately need are secular governments, which have respect for different religions. And such governments were actually instituted in the recent past. But what has been the fate of those governments?

Well, in the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a secular government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women, which is hard to believe, isn’t it? But even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women’s rights in Afghanistan. And what happened to that government? The United States overthrew it, allowing the Taliban to come to power. So keep that in mind the next time you hear an American official say that we have to remain in Afghanistan for the sake of women’s rights.

After Afghanistan came Iraq, another secular society, under Saddam Hussein. And the United States overthrew that government as well, and now the country is overrun by crazed and bloody jihadists and fundamentalists of all kinds; and women who are not covered up are running a serious risk.

Next came Libya; again, a secular country, under Moammar Gaddafi, who, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important ways be benevolent and do marvelous things for Libya and Africa. To name just one example, Libya had a high ranking on the United Nation’s Human Development Index. So, of course, the United States overthrew that government as well. In 2011, with the help of NATO we bombed the people of Libya almost every day for more than six months. And, once again, this led to messianic jihadists having a field day. How it will all turn out for the people of Libya, only God knows, or perhaps Allah.

And for the past three years, the United States has been doing its best to overthrow the secular government of Syria. And guess what? Syria is now a playground and battleground for all manner of ultra militant fundamentalists, including everyone’s new favorite, IS, the Islamic State. The rise of IS owes a lot to what the US has done in Iraq, Libya, and Syria in recent years.

We can add to this marvelous list the case of the former Yugoslavia, another secular government that was overthrown by the United States, in the form of NATO, in 1999, giving rise to the creation of the largely-Muslim state of Kosovo, run by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the US, the UK and France for years, with numerous reports of the KLA being armed and trained by al-Qaeda, in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, and even having members of al-Qaeda in KLA ranks fighting against the Serbs of Yugoslavia. Washington’s main concern was dealing a blow to Serbia, widely known as “the last communist government in Europe”.

The KLA became renowned for their torture, their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts; another charming client of the empire.

Someone looking down upon all this from outer space could be forgiven for thinking that the United States is an Islamic power doing its best to spread the word – Allah Akbar!

But what, you might wonder, did each of these overthrown governments have in common that made them a target of Washington’s wrath? The answer is that they could not easily be controlled by the empire; they refused to be client states; they were nationalistic; in a word, they were independent; a serious crime in the eyes of the empire.

So mention all this as well to our hypothetical supporter of US foreign policy and see whether he still believes that the United States means well. If he wonders how long it’s been this way, point out to him that it would be difficult to name a single brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population. And in recent years as well, Washington has supported very repressive governments, such as Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

And what do American leaders think of their own record? Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was probably speaking for the whole private club of our foreign-policy leadership when she wrote in 2000 that in the pursuit of its national security the United States no longer needed to be guided by “notions of international law and norms” or “institutions like the United Nations” because America was “on the right side of history.”

Let me remind you of Daniel Ellsberg’s conclusion about the US in Vietnam: “It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side; we were the wrong side.”

Well, far from being on the right side of history, we have in fact fought – I mean actually engaged in warfare – on the same side as al Qaeda and their offspring on several occasions, beginning with Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s in support of the Islamic Moujahedeen, or Holy Warriors.

The US then gave military assistance, including bombing support, to Bosnia and Kosovo, both of which were being supported by al Qaeda in the Yugoslav conflicts of the early 1990s.

In Libya, in 2011, Washington and the Jihadists shared a common enemy, Gaddafi, and as mentioned, the US bombed the people of Libya for more than six months, allowing jihadists to take over parts of the country; and they’re now fighting for the remaining parts. These wartime allies showed their gratitude to Washington by assassinating the US ambassador and three other Americans, apparently CIA, in the city of Benghazi.

Then, for some years in the mid and late 2000s, the United States backed Islamic militants in the Caucasus region of Russia, an area that has seen more than its share of religious terror going back to the Chechnyan actions of the 1990s.

Finally, in Syria, in attempting to overthrow the Assad government, the US has fought on the same side as several varieties of Islamic militants. That makes six occasions of the US being wartime allies of jihadist forces.

I realize that I have fed you an awful lot of negativity about what America has done to the world, and maybe it’s been kind of hard for some of you to swallow. But my purpose has been to try to loosen the grip on your intellect and your emotions that you’ve been raised with – or to help you to help others to loosen that grip – the grip that assures you that your beloved America means well. US foreign policy will not make much sense to you as long as you believe that its intentions are noble; as long as you ignore the consistent pattern of seeking world domination, which is a national compulsion of very long standing, known previously under other names such as Manifest Destiny, the American Century, American exceptionalism, globalization, or, as Madeleine Albright put it, “the indispensable nation” … while others less kind have used the term “imperialist”.

In this context I can’t resist giving the example of Bill Clinton. While president, in 1995, he was moved to say: “Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the brave Americans who fought and died there had noble motives. They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese people.” Yes, that’s really the way our leaders talk. But who knows what they really believe?

It is my hope that many of you who are not now activists against the empire and its wars will join the anti-war movement as I did in 1965 against the war in Vietnam. It’s what radicalized me and so many others. When I hear from people of a certain age about what began the process of losing their faith that the United States means well, it’s Vietnam that far and away is given as the main cause. I think that if the American powers-that-be had known in advance how their “Oh what a lovely war” was going to turn out they might not have made their mammoth historical blunder. Their invasion of Iraq in 2003 indicates that no Vietnam lesson had been learned at that point, but our continuing protest against war and threatened war in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere may have – may have! – finally made a dent in the awful war mentality. I invite you all to join our movement. Thank you.

Notes

1. NBC News, “German TV Shows Nazi Symbols on Helmets of Ukraine Soldiers”, September 6 2014
2. BBC, March 18, 2014
3. Information Clearinghouse, “How Can You Tell Whether Russia has Invaded Ukraine?”, September 1 2014
4. Boston Globe, October 12, 2001
5. See, for example, William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower(2005), chapter 1
6. Washington Post, August 28, 2014
7. Foreign Affairs magazine (Council on Foreign Relations), January/February 2000

If You Want To Get Into A Really Big War, Elect A Liberal

If I pointed out that involvement in every major 20th-century conflict the US was part of occurred on liberals’ watch, it might not be entirely fair. True, there was WWI under Wilson, WWII under FDR, Korea under Truman, and Vietnam under Kennedy and Johnson. But the second Great War needed to be fought, four conflicts aren’t exactly a scientific sample, and some could contend that these men were, to some extent, victims of timing and circumstance. It also should be said that with modernity’s characteristic flaw of relativism causing ever shifting social visions, yesterday’s liberals aren’t like today’s. As to this, some may mention that it’s a tad tendentious to limit the conflict timeframe to the 20th century, with George W. Bush getting us into Iraq and Afghanistan. But like his father, Bush was always a traditional statist, an old-line liberal in the mold of JFK. Moreover, our Middle East adventures weren’t quite like Korea or Vietnam: the wars were won fast. The problem was winning the peace.

But, fair enough, the historical record itself isn’t sufficient to indict liberals as warmongers. No matter, though, because I don’t claim liberals are warmongers. They are ignorance and naïveté mongers.

Avoiding disastrous war is the stuff of foreign policy, and foreign policy involves dealing with other humans; as such, it can only be as good as your understanding of human nature. Thus, just as in the schoolyard or the street, your ability to avoid disastrous international fights will be commensurate with your understanding of human nature. Can you read people — some of whom are potential threats — well? Can you differentiate between a gathering storm that needs to be nipped in the bud and a situation exacerbated by meddling? Do you know what’s your business and what isn’t? Can you strike the balance between projecting the strength that deters aggression and seeming as a threat yourself? Complicating matters is that foreign policy is about dealing with foreign human beings, people sharing your basic nature but not your basic conception of the world.

Given this, it’s clear that a leader can only avoid unnecessary or disastrous war insofar as he grasps man’s nature. And how do liberals measure up in this area?

During the 1990s budget battles, liberals said that with the alleged Republican “budget cuts,” the elderly would have to eat dog food to afford medicine. Spoofing this, radio host Rush Limbaugh said that he purchased a new can opener for his mother “so that she can get the dog food easier when she has to eat it.” The next day, liberal Congresswoman Pat Schroeder took to the House floor and said, flabbergasted, “[T]his is what it’s come to! …Rush Limbaugh actually said he’s going to buy his mother a can opener so she can have dog food. Wow!”

Yeah, wow. Schroeder took seriously the most obvious of jokes. Talk about an inability to read people. Talk about a foreign human being.

Exhibit B: at a 1990s feminist conference in my area, I made a rather articulate statement during the question-and-answer session, prompting some agitated feminist organizers to subsequently approach me and ask if I represented some group. Finding me unpalatable, they ultimately begged out of the conversation by offering to send me literature and asking for my address. I consented but quipped, “As long as you don’t send a hit squad to my house.”

You guessed it. Schroederesquely, they took me seriously and said sternly, “We don’t do things like that.” Bizarre. Just bizarre.

Then I think of Charles Jenkins, an American soldier who spent 39 years in North Korean captivity. After finally returning to the US, he said about his arch-leftist captors, “[W]hen you lie they think you are telling the truth, and when you tell the truth they think you are lying. You learn real quick to say no when you mean yes, and yes when you mean no.” I guess the North Koreans are just like our leftists — only more so.

My last example concerns the nuclear-war scare of 1983. When the CIA reported that the Soviets actually thought NATO command-post exercise Able Archer 83 might be a prelude to a nuclear attack, President Ronald Reagan was shocked. Reagan’s deputy CIA director Robert Gates would later , “Was the Soviet leadership so out of touch that they really believed a preemptive attack was a real possibility?”

Yes, they were.

They were leftists.

Of course, it’s no put-down to mention that just as the Soviets misread Washington, Reagan and, it appears, all his advisors misread the Soviets. We all fail in this regard at times, mistaking a joke for a serious comment, taking offense when none was intended or something else. Discernment is a continuum. But while some people occupy the Amazing Kreskin end of the scale, others populate the Schroeder end. And having such a person in power can mean the bitter end.

And what of Obama? Is he at all a mind-reader or just a Teleprompter reader? He misread ISIS, calling it the “JV team.” He misread the tribalistic, Muslim humans in Iraq, saying they had a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant” “representative government.” He misread the Middle East in general, stating “the tide of war is receding.” As the usually sympathetic New York Times wrote about the president, “Time and again, he has expressed assessments of the world that in the harsh glare of hindsight look out of kilter with the changed reality he now confronts.”

Moreover, just last week Obama said in Estonia that an attack on that nation (alluding to Russian aggression) would be considered an attack on all of NATO and be met with the “armed forces of the United States of America.” Huh? As Pat Buchanan pointed out, such a statement about Russia’s sphere of influence is unprecedented and is something Obama’s “Cold War predecessors would have regarded as certifiable madness.” Would the president really risk nuclear war over tiny Estonia? Was it prudent to enter Vladimir Putin’s backyard and saber rattle? Was Obama wise to send the message that he’s either the world’s worst bluffer or its most insane leader?

But, again, liberals are the Braille bunch of human understanding. Just consider their prescriptions for deterring criminals, disciplining children, interpreting sexual inclinations or perceived statuses, encouraging productivity, avoiding nuclear war (unilateral disarmament), dealing with bullies in schools, thwarting school shootings (gun-free zones) or just about anything else that involves understanding man’s nature. Like old Patsy, who mistook a most comedic comment for the most serious callousness, they don’t just get others wrong — they get things completely backwards.

Why is this? Because liberals live lives of rationalization, something debating them reveals. You can make an airtight point and a leftist not only won’t cede it, he’ll disgorge a completely absurd denial of reality. Of course, that’s what a rationalization is: when you lie to yourself, bend reality for yourself. And when you deny reality habitually, year after year — refusing to see one pixel here, another there, and a thousand others in different places — you never assemble enough elements of reality to see the big picture; this is called being out of touch with reality. Yet living in a Matrix of his own design, the person doesn’t know he’s thus detached. But the consequence is that he has difficulty discerning truth; he misreads people, events, life, the Universe and everything.

What explains liberals’ propensity for rationalization? Note here that by “liberals” I mean people who are relativists, who don’t believe in Absolute Truth, because this defines liberals (generally speaking) at the deepest level: the philosophical. And while we all may rationalize, there is a difference. If a person believes in Truth, he’ll likely care about it and be less likely to deny one of its inconvenient or uncomfortable aspects. He’ll be wont to say, “Okay, I don’t like reality here, but, heck, the Truth’s the Truth; I’ll just have to man up and accept it.” He also may understand, or at least sense intuitively, that denial of Truth is a moral defect.

But the person fancying that morality is just values and values are man-made, that everything is relative, approaches things differently. You can’t be denying Truth if Truth doesn’t exist; you’re just denying a different perspective. Moreover, even in matters of outright deception, such as peddling forged documents damaging to George W. Bush, what of it? A lie can’t be any worse than the “truth” in a relativistic universe. For everything there boils down to occultist Aleister Crowley’s maxim, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

So what can we expect from our detached-from-reality ignorance mongers? Well, pondering this I’m reminded of a woman whose somewhat liberal husband would be namby-pamby with their son, let him take too many liberties and allow the tension to build, until he would explode and react to the boy inappropriately. That’s the danger with leftists. If anyone would get us into a really big war, it would be someone who misreads situations and other people, fails to take necessary preventive action, and then reacts rashly. It would be a liberal.

Of course, the bigger problem is the detached ignorance mongers who would elect an Obama — twice. But, hey, perhaps they can persevere if they maintain their ability to rationalize. After all, with the onset of a nuclear winter, there would be no reason to worry about global warming.

The Prosperity Priestess And The Pied Pieper of IHOP

Well lookie here.  Joyce Meyer, popular women’s conference speaker; health and wealth author; radio & TV teacher (whew!) has been invited to speak at the that will be held this December.  The 4 day weekend supposedly draws 25,000 young adults.  Visit Onething and you will find that the conference is “a gathering of believers who are setting their hearts to live with passion for Jesus.”  Sounds like a conference most Christians would love to attend.  What sincere believer wouldn’t want to share his/her passion for Jesus?

Not so fast.  The group behind the event is none other than the (IHOP) an evangelical mission organization that has its home base in Kansas City. IHOP-KC’s founder, Mike Bickle, has ties to the aka ; Kingdom Now; Latter Rain; ; Manifest Sons of God – the name has been changed to protect the guilty.  Their aim is to transform society into the kingdom of God on earth.  How?  By controlling various aspects of society.

Before I fill you in on Meyer, you’ll need a bit of background on Bickle.  A couple of decades ago he was in a heretical group known as the ,

who brought grandiose claims that a “new breed” of super prophets were beginning to arrive on planet earth who would change the world forever. These so-called prophets were a group of men that coalesced around a church known as the Kansas City Fellowship, pastored by Mike Bickle, that attracted a following of other likeminded churches in that region. (H/T )

So it’s not surprising that this self-professed “prophet” has been under scrutiny for his false teaching.  Google his name and you’ll discover that he believes God speaks to him in an audible voice and claims that he’s been to heaven twice.

It’s important to note that last year Reformed pastor; author; conference speaker Francis Chan spoke at Onething where he declared “I love Mike Bickle.”  Chan took a lot of heat for agreeing to speak at the conference.  When friends and fans urged him to decline the invite, he admitted that he didn’t know much about Mike Bickle and IHOP so,

I kinda went on the Internet and started looking things up. 

Whatever he found caused him to fall in love:

I go, man, there’s a lot of great things going on [at IHOP]. And today was the first time I ever met Mike Bickle. And, I love that guy. I do. And Mike knows—we talked about this—you know, there’s people who told me not to hang out with him.

Like, you know, words like “creepy” came up. And yet, I get to know this guy and I’m going, “Man, I love his heart. And I just want to publicly say I love Mike Bickle. ()

As you can see, Chan professed his love for the sort of person Jesus referred to as a ravenous wolf. ()

What Francis Chan failed to turn up in his investigation is that Mike Bickle has led countless young people astray.  He’s a sort of a Pied Piper to those who journey to Kansas City from all over the globe to be a part of something “significant.” Once there, they stay for days, months…even years.  You’ll find them in the prayer room praying.  Prayer “led from a stage full of musicians and readers chanting repetitive phrasings of faith” goes on ‘round the clock.

The false prophet has filled the young sojourners’ heads with untruths such as “an elite end-time church defeats God’s enemies, and Jesus is ‘held in the heavens’ until it happens.” So they most “go forth and make ready.”

Apologist Matt Slick tells us that the major draw of IHOP is experience:

People often come to me citing their experience and go back again and again to experience “God” and the “Spirit” – [which is] no different than an emotional high.  This is analogous to mysticism, which is defined as “the pursuit of deeper or higher subjective religious experience,” and “that spiritual reality is perceived apart from the human intellect and natural senses.”

Slick goes on to say:

One of the highest criticisms would be IHOP’s insidious Gnosticism.  Gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge.”  The hallmark of Gnosticism is the idea of having “hidden knowledge” of the spiritual realm that is unavailable to others.  This knowledge comes via prophecies, visions, and dreams that God specifically gives to a certain privileged group of people  – in this case IHOP.  In fact, IHOP has their own “prophecy rooms” where one can receive “prophecies,” and they used to have a practice of mailing out recorded tapes, of which I was asked by my friend’s mother to translate! ()

One last comment about Francis Chan.  The name may not be familiar but he’s without question a popular speaker and author whose books sell like hot cakes.  Sadly, when it comes to the questionable goings on at IHOP, Chan has shown an astonishing lack of discernment. It goes without saying that: (1) He must change direction and move away from those who involve themselves with the .  (2)  He must spend more time researching the people he associates with.

More On Meyer

For decades Joyce Meyer has been called a false teacher.  Why?  Because she holds to /prosperity/health and wealth heresy.  She mixes error with good practical information for women, which is why she’s so popular.  There’s plenty of proof for those who wish to know the truth (see the links at the end), and still many women choose to believe that those who say she’s a false teacher are wrong.

Some of her fans know what’s going on at IHOP-KC, so she’s bound to get blow back both before and after her appearance at Onething.  People will wonder: If I know about Mike Bickle and IHOP, how could Joyce not know?  They may even conclude that it’s a sign that her ministry is about to align with the modern day “apostles and prophets” movement.

So why in heaven’s name is she hitching herself to a wagon loaded with theological garbage.  As I pointed out earlier, “prophet” Mike Bickle is heavily into the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).  That group’s theology is a load of garbage that should be hauled to the trash dump and burned.

But before I address the reasons Meyer has chosen to put her name on the marquee with Bickle’s, let’s follow the example set by the Bereans and compare her teaching to what Scripture says.

Truth Or Error, That Is The Question

One of the reasons Joyce Meyer is considered a false teacher is because she has taught that Jesus Christ atoned for our sins in hell:

The following quote is from her 1991 booklet, The Most Important Decision You Will Ever Make, she teaches a hallmark doctrine of Faith theology, namely, that Christ had to suffer in hell to atone for our sins and be born again:

“During that time He entered hell, where you and I deserved to go (legally) because of our sin…He paid the price there.…no plan was too extreme…Jesus paid on the cross and in hell….God rose up from His throne and said to demon powers tormenting the sinless Son of God, “Let Him go.” Then the resurrection power of Almighty God went through hell and filled Jesus…He was resurrected from the dead ¾ the first born-again man.” ()

What she said here is not the view traditional orthodox Christianity holds to.   The Bible says that Jesus atoned for our sins on the cross.  Listen to :

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus’ shed blood was sufficient for the atonement of our sins. The moment Jesus uttered the words “It is finished” our sin debt was paid in full.

As to her teaching on prosperity and success, listen to :

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

So, does being prosperous mean Christians will be influential and financially secure?  According to one commentary:

Many people think that prosperity and success come from having power, influential personal contacts, and a relentless desire to get ahead.  But the strategy for gaining prosperity that God taught Joshua goes against such criteria.  He said that to succeed Joshua must (1) be strong and courageous because the task ahead would not be easy, (2) obey God’s law, and (3) constantly read and study the Book of the Law – God’s Word.  To be successful, follow God’s words to Joshua.  You may not succeed by the world’s standards, but you will be a success in God’s eyes – and his opinion lasts forever.

For all you scoffers – it’s an undeniable fact that Joyce Meyer is a prosperity preacher, thus she’s a false teacher, a ravenous wolf.

Lifestyle Of The Rich And Famous

It’s no secret that she has been criticized for many things but first and foremost for her “conspicuously prosperous lifestyle.”  The money her ministry rakes in doesn’t bother her fans in the least which is obvious as scores of them purchase her books, tune into her TV/radio shows, and flock to her conferences.  They say her message is “uplifting.”  For them doctrine isn’t important –hearing a positive message is what counts.  And Joyce is all about making her fans feel good.  She knows that they prefer a feel-good message over hearing the gospel.  I mean, isn’t Christianity all about feeling good?  Doesn’t becoming a believer mean we’ll be happy, healthy and wealthy?  God loves us, yes He does.  And because of His great love for His kids, He’s going to provide us with several homes—Joyce has several homes– and perhaps our own private jet so that we can fly all over the globe like she does.

Joyce Meyer’s prosperity preaching is right out of the (WoF) play book.  That a person can create his/her own reality is the fairy tale Christianity she teaches and with no apology.  So, it’s not helpful when a prominent Christian leader joins her on her TV show and instead of pointing out errors in her teaching he tells her (and the audience) that she’s a “.”

Well, nothing could be further from the truth, and Ravi Zacharias, who gave her the compliment, should have known better.  He of all people should know that she holds to WoF heresy.  The compliment he gave her made it clear that he was oblivious to the fact that he was sitting next to a heretic.  So, Ravi did for her what she’s doing for Mike Bickle, lending creditability when none is deserved.

Like Chan, if he would have done his homework before agreeing to the interview, it would have been patently obvious that he was going to be the guest of the Prosperity Priestess. It’s shocking that high-profile celebs such as Francis Chan and Ravi Zacharias don’t know who the wolves in the hen house are.  Moreover, how could men of their stature not be aware that the NAR and WoF movements are at best aberrant and at worst cults?

Cults? you say with steam coming out of your ears.  Let there be no doubt.  These movements are viewed by some as cults for the reason that they’re “false, unorthodox, extremist” sects of Christianity (). In a word:  counterfeit.

Now getting back the primary purpose for this article, why would Joyce Meyer agree to speak at a hugely controversial event with a notorious false teacher?  Perhaps it’s because the Prosperity Priestess and the Pied Piper hold the same unbiblical theology, thus they’re birds of a feather.  So it’s no big deal when they sit on a wire together.

Or perhaps it’s all about prosperity – hers!  After hearing Joyce’s “uplifting” message people will flock to the book table to purchase her merchandise.

But that’s speculation.  The point I want to drive home is this.  More and more professing Christians are uniting with wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Likewise, wolves and wolverines are joining forces with wolves from different wolf packs.  The pack is growing.  It’s getting stronger — and they’re cunning!  False teachers now play a major role in the Christian community.  As I mentioned above, in order to transform society into the kingdom of God on earth, wolves and wolverines must , such as entertainment; government; education; business/economy; media; and family — they’re heavily involved in pro-family organizations.

I’ll close with the words of a wise man, Pastor Ray Stedman:

So in this day of confusion, of uncertainty, which voice will you listen to?  The voices of the occult world around us? The false prophets who are telling visions which they claim to be coming from the voice of God? The secular voices which tell us that things are not the way the Bible says they are? Which voice will you listen to? Whom will you follow? What will be the guideline for your actions?

Research Mike Bickle:

–By John Park

Stand Up For The Truth wrote a piece entitled and shared the story of Arial, a young woman who was an IHOP intern.

—My Word Like Fire

–Apostasy Watch

—On Solid Rock Resources

Research Joyce Meyer:

…listen to Meyer preach the prosperity gospel.  Hank Hanegraaff plays the clip and responds.

—Let Us Reason Ministries

—By Anton Bosch

 

—On Solid Rock Resources

Francis Chan:

—By Ken Silva

Happy Workers of The Future

Life In 500 Square Feet…

One Hundred and Twenty Thousand results to a Google search on “city is more competitive”.  The oligarchs who currently control our world intend to herd people in cities where inter-city  contests will keep everyone producing at a high level.

Read how this is already being implemented in China.

More and more of the land is falling under government control and hundreds of thousands of homes have been repossessed.  American citizens own fewer homes and less land.  If this scenario is successful the earth will be enjoyed by elite overseers while the proletariat toils and lives in tiny cubicles in crowded cities.

I wrote recently about our connection to land

In his daily devotional books R. J. Rushdoony (These books are tightly connected to daily behavior and provide usable righteousness for the Christian seeker.  Buy them here .)describes Rogation Sunday and its practice by early Americans.  In the evening following Sunday prayer for the harvest “each farmer and his family walked the boundaries of their property and gave thanks for the good earth.  As they walked, the boy of the family was ‘bumped’ against the landmarks, the boundary stone, or against a boundary tree.  If a pond or stream marked the boundary he was ducked into it.  Then the boy who was bumped or ducked was given a small gift.  The purpose of the ‘bumping’ and of the gift was to make the boy remember the boundaries of the land he would someday fall heir to.”

Land plays a primary role in the Biblical narrative.  The occupation of the Promised Land, the events the preceded, and the battles that followed make up a significant part of the Old Testament.  The earth is the Lord’s and it is to be carefully maintained.  He provided land for His people and it was apportioned to the Twelve Tribes.  He provided the Year of Jubilee to provide stability and prevent a permanent centralization of wealth and power.

Borders of land are related to God’s Law – both are meant to restrain.

In some of America’s Western States 80 percent of the land is owned by the Federal Government.  Alaska’s land is mostly government property.  Oil drilling rights are controlled in Washington.  If these rights were released United States would be energy independent.  Reliable sources claim the government owns about 30 percent of the entire United States land mass.

There is evidence that powerful elite bankers may be conspiring to take over large tracts of land as collateral for debt.   As our government obligates our posterity for trillions of dollars of debt some of it could be paid by sacrificing government owned land.  This could be the genesis of the recent squabble over cattle grazing.  .

In His provisions for the lands in ancient Israel God allowed the permanent sales of urban properties but had rural lands returned to their original owners in the year of Jubilee.  Stability was vested in the families than owned and cultivated land.  Though often overlooked it is still the same today; the cultivation of land provides sustenance for the populace of the earth.

Water and food are products of the earth.  They sustain life.  Without food and water death comes quickly.  Control over access to water and food is power over life and death.  The earth belongs to The Lord we are short term custodians.  God tells us that those who do not work should not eat.  It is the ability to produce food that is everyone’s God given right.

Robots are being touted as a means of reducing the need for human labor.  The analyzer failed to address the fate of displaced workers.  As technology replaces human labor a problem develops over the use of displaced workers.  When Wal-Mart replaces cashiers with do-it-yourself checkout stations they realize an additional profit but the displaced cashiers are faced with the emergency of being deprived of their livelihood.

Societies benefit from technical progress and work that benefits the general population is deserving of reward.  However, when technical improvements displace energetic workers the workers must be provided with the means of working to earn food and lodging for themselves and their families.

What is to be done with the leisure time our technical progress is giving us?  For many it will be used for self-indulgence.  Most of us work to provide the necessities of life but constantly pine for leisure time. But if leisure time is not filled with activity we soon hope for something to do.  We were created for activity and when we are full of sleep we crave it.

Wealth provides a person with activity choices.  Some wealthy individuals find productive activities; others waste their time in sinful indulgences.  A few amass wealth consistently over several generations and use this tacit control of human life to manipulate world powers with an objective of world domination.

We are created beings vested with the mandate to live under the Law our Creator has provided.  The Law is not an impediment to our happiness; obedience is the vehicle to righteous, peace, joy, and prosperity.  God brings blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.

It is not only difficult to experience but hard to believe that the United States of America is being gutted and destroyed on the altar of world government.  Though the mainstream media is complicit and refuses to publish the atrocities the signs are everywhere.  How can airplanes clearly visible to the entire population fly over our nation and spray long trails of an unknown cloud-like substance while the people, the weather channels, and the major news sources never acknowledge their presence?  How can an entire government, 435 congressional representatives, 100 senators, and one president ignore hundreds of engineers and piles of evidence that the 9/11 attack was false flag operation and allow the policies of our government to be based on its authenticity?  And most shocking of all, how can voters continue with confidence to cast ballots for candidates that invariably betray their trust?

U. S. Voters are like battered spouses that continue to return to the battering partner.  It makes no sense to observers but to the voters its must seem like the only alternative.  An intervention is sometimes the only solution – but how?

The United States of America has been filled with alien immigrants whose only interest is to rape its wealth.  It is engaged in constant wars that sap its strength and destroys its youth.   It has been saturated with pornography and bludgeoned into sodomy. For many years its citizens have been exposed to the most aggressive use of incarceration in the entire world.  It has piled up debt that probably cannot be repaid but will enslave its children for generations.  It is home to so many diverse and ineffective religions that the anarchy of secular humanism is helping push it into tyranny.  Liberty has been lost to the lust for power and we now live under a police force that regularly kills citizens that do not obey.

More and more Americans are becoming concerned with our progressive downfall.  They see the clouds of tyranny approaching and they feel the winds of turmoil.  They are beginning to understand that their government has betrayed them and are apprehensive that unseen forces are overshadowing us. But in spite of this approaching avalanche they are unable to discern the hand of God.

During the 1930s in the small towns of Central United States a deep depression afflicted everyone.  We were grateful to be able to eat from a 25 pound bag of oatmeal three times a day.  Men without work hitched rides on railroad trains that took them to other areas where they hoped to find work.  Those who had food to eat shared with the transients who would often do add jobs in payment.

In the little town where I lived an Evangelical pastor was called to our protestant church.  In an effort to bring the congregation closer to the God of the Bible he began having altar calls.  The altar call was too confrontational for the church leaders whose brush with Christianity consisted of a Sunday School Bible studies where God’s Word could be judged by the participants and they could decide whether they believed it or not.  This minister was soon replaced with one who did not upset the status quo.

Before the Evangelical minister left there was a miracle at my mother’s home.  She has been a Methodist all of her life and following my conversion we sometimes discussed religion.  On this particular day she was sitting in her antique platform rocker in the living room when she asked me about conversion.  I said, “The Bible says you must be born again”.  At that very moment there was a knock on the front door.  It was the recently dismissed minister.  He came in and sat down.  In familiar fashion mother said, “Now, Albert, tell the minster what you were telling me.  I did, the minster affirmed it, and Mother said, “I don’t believe I have ever done that”.   We bowed our heads and mother accepted Christ as her Savior.  The minister left without ever mentioning why he had knocked on our door.

Neither my mother nor I made much progress in the Faith since correct Christian theology was not readily available and when it was preached it usually fell on deaf and recalcitrant ears.  We are a nation of nominal Christians whose faith is selfish and sinful.  We say we believe in God and have accepted Christ as our Savior but instead of becoming obedient servants we expect Him to serve us

During the 1930s there was a Christian patina that covered heavy layers of humanism.   My mother was a good, dependable woman.  She had earned a college degree from University of Illinois but with my father out of work and not having today’s labor saving devices she was forced to work hard to keep up our home and keep food on the table.

For a time my father worked in the WPA but for the most part society during the depression was free from government interference.  Nevertheless, a pride-filled humanism had taken over the country and the seeds for our current tyrannical government were beginning to grow.

Evangelical Christianity brings the good news to individuals but when they are converted the lack of a solid theological base leaves them in a moral limbo that fails to bring change to society.  Once our sins are forgiven and we are made new by the Blood of the Savior God seeks obedience as He always has.  The Jews failed to obey God’s commandments and their disobedience broke the Covenant.  All of God’s blessings are the result of obedience to His Law.

God will not long allow an oligarchy of wealthy humanistic elitists to control His creation.  All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and He will bring blessing from this unprecedented quest for world domination.  Unfortunately Christians who have failed to work against encroaching evil will be severely judged and will not see the blessing in store for His faithful servants.

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